


a ukrainian sleepover

by nadia5803



Series: liaisons by nadia [6]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Childhood Friends, Friends to Enemies, Just a whole lot of fun for the whole extended family!, Major Original Character(s), Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:55:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26415265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadia5803/pseuds/nadia5803
Summary: it's a complicated ukrainian novel, everyone's got nine different names~since his election, pietro has always been viewed as rather naive and innocuous, but even the most benevolent of leaders have their secrets
Series: liaisons by nadia [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1631752
Comments: 9
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> wow i havent written in forever and i really need to get this down because it is FULL PIETRO BRAINROT TIME  
> anyway sorry for not writing fanfic i have been on full oc lockdown for the last 6 months <3 eventually i'll write again but for now thank you for watching me clown on main

For a rather influential president, Pietro Semynovich Naumenko’s house was rather modest. Sandwiched in between two apartment blocks on a Kyiv backstreet, it was a little building only two stories high and with such a bland exterior the regular passerby wouldn’t believe it to be the president’s capital residence. Only a short walk from the blue Dnieper River snaking through the city’s center, though, Pietro Semynovich saw it as good enough for himself and his friends and future family. He’d spent the last day neatening it up, dusting, cleaning, housemaking, hoping that Olesya and her step-brother Olexey would be pleased. While the air was cold and the sky was grey with wintertime, snow had not yet fallen, and Pietro sat on the edge of his armchair, anticipating a week with his growing family. The grandfather clock in the corner ticked back and forth, and he rocked back and forth, and tapped his feet and shifted his position a countless number of times as he waited. How long could a drive from Odessa be? Not long enough, it seemed.

The clock ticked with intensity as he paced, impatient and enthusiastic and waiting for his fiancé. Cars sped by on the street, and he shuffled over to the open window, looking over at the city. While lights still peeked through the towering apartments and from roving headlights, the sun was completely extinguished. And as Pietro leaned out, elbows pressing on the windowsill as he breathed in the cold, metallic air, a snowflake drifted by his face. “Oh!” He slammed the window shut, pressing his face against it like a fascinated child. “Oh!” What started as a single snowflake on the breeze had already intensified, and he smacked himself. The fireplace! He hadn’t even thought to light the fireplace. But as he descended down the ancient row of stairs to do so, the sound of a fading car engine and the buzz of his charging phone on the kitchen counter was enough to send him charging for the door. Throwing on a pair of slippers and flinging the door open, he ran onto the porch with a smile. “The Shevchenkos!”

With the porchlight bouncing off of Olesya’s slick brown hair, she looked almost like an angel with a halo. Pulling her long dress above her ankles she joined Pietro’s side, greeting him with a kiss. “Hi, darling,” she murmured, grinning. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too!” Pietro mirrored her grin, grabbing her hands and walking her in. “You made it just in time. It just started to snow,”

“A little help?” Olexey demanded, hands full with suitcases in the doorway.

“Right… How about I go help Olexey? Get comfortable. I, um, put out snacks. Grapes, like you like them.”

Olesya disappeared into the kitchen, and Pietro joined Olexey out on the porch. “Olexey Dmitrievich…”

“You touch my sister and you’re dead,” Olexey muttered, shoving two suitcases into Pietro’s open hands. 

“Kinda late, we’re already engaged,” Pietro replied, circling by Olexey with a smile. “I appreciate the loyalty, though.”

“None of the comedian crap either, Pietro Semynovich, please. You’re in a position of great power, now, I’d appreciate it if you took it seriously.” He stood in the doorway, watching silently as Pietro struggled with the trunk. “It’s locked.”

“Whoops. Right. Do you have anything else, or…?” 

Olexey reached into his pocket and fiddled with the car key, allowing Pietro to retry his hand at opening the trunk. Pietro smiled, and Olexey nodded, pushing the curly hair out of his face as he vanished into the house. Pietro sighed, bending over and picking up the last of the bags in the trunk before setting the door back down.

Placing the bags in the foyer, he stepped into the kitchen to find Olesya sat on one of the stools, legs crossed, and Olexey hunched over the fireplace, charcoal and lighter in hand. “You know how to do that?” Pietro asked gently.

“I work in the energy sector,” Olexey snapped, pressing down on the handheld lighter and watching the flames spring from the top. 

“We know,” Olesya replied, grinning as Olexey gave her one of his looks. 

“Okay, Pietro Semynovich can do it, then, in all his presidential-level glory,” he dropped the supplies on the floor and joined Olesya at the tableside, popping a grape in his mouth. “That’s a challenge, by the way.”

“Of course it is.”

“You can do it, Hercules,” Olesya said encouragingly. “Complete the lightning god’s impossible task.” Olexey scoffed at the metaphor and leaned back, crossing his legs and watching Pietro with deep interest. “Go on.”

Pietro crouched over the firewood and tapped the handheld lighter against it, putting on his best confused face, before setting it alight and backing up with haste. The flames already burned with intensity, licking over the firewood and filling the house with the warmth it desperately needed. “There you are. I did it.”

Olexey still looked unimpressed, but Olesya nodded with pride, joining her fiancé’s side. “Petya did great.”

“Yeah, yeah. Anyone could have done it.”

Olesya scoffed, picking up the edges of her dress and flopping onto the couch, kicking off her shoes and stretching her arms up to the ceiling. “I think the house looks great too! We left it a pigsty last time, I’m pleased to see it looks much better. Did you rearrange the…?”

“Pictures on the mantel? Yep, yes. I did!” Pietro picked up a few of the frames, wiping them down with his sleeve and facing Olesya. “Our Lviv Academy class photo…”

“Damn, you look so much younger.”

“That time we went to Croatia. Man. The beach. How’s the beach in Odessa?”

She gazed at the photographs longingly, and sighed. “Crowded. Lyosha and I barely get to go. I’m busy teaching Tolstoy and Lyosha’s been… hm… Lyosha, have you told Petya about your project?”

Olexey looked up from the generous portion of grapes he had helped himself to. “The— the project? Erm, Olya…”

Pietro beamed. “I’d like to hear it.”

“Well, I don’t know. I’ve been on the road lately. I’m trying to figure out that whole wind and weather fracking thing. But mostly, uh, solar power,” Olexey nodded as if what he was saying made any sense. “It’s not anything of serious importance. And you’d have to know about the whole energy thing to really grasp it. You’re not too keen on that, are you, Pietro?”

Pietro shrugged.

“Maybe you should put some money into the energy sector, then, Pietro.”

He shrugged again. Olesya glared at her stepbrother, unhappy. “How about we just have dinner, and maybe not discuss politics? I’m sure Petya is real tired of it, and you must be, too. So why don’t we all relax and talk about the weather or something?”

Olexey shifted, eyebrows furrowed. “But--”

“Or if that’s not plausible, how about…” Olesya held up a finger and strode over to her bag, whipping out her oversized copy of War and Peace and holding it up. “We can do some reading? Naumenko-Shevchenko book club? Hm, I may have a few more copies…”

Olexey clamped his hands together, grinning. “Dinner is fine, then!”

*

Pietro was hunched over the sink, whistling as he ran the dishes under the cold tap water. The winter must have broken through to the city pipes, he thought, as he held his hands beneath it. Despite him turning the knob as far as he could, it was not a drop warmer. He shivered, and then felt a hand on his back.

“Can I talk to you upstairs?” Olesya asked. She’d changed into something more comfortable, sweatpants and a camisole, as had Pietro. He’d rolled up the sleeves of his sweater to clean, but dropped them back down as he followed her up the carpeted staircase. He shut the guest room door behind them.

Olesya stood on the tips of her toes, granting him a long kiss on the lips. Her hands found their way to his, and she stepped back. “I’m sorry for bringing Lyosha along. He’s been on you since we got here.” 

“It’s okay,” Pietro said, releasing a bated sigh as he squeezed Olesya’s warm hands. “I think he’s serious about objecting.”

“We can just... not invite him?” she offered, shrugging as she leaned her head on Pietro’s chest.

“I don’t know. I feel like I owe him something. If I didn’t get the job at the energy sector then I wouldn’t have gotten the job in Parliament, and then where would we be?” Pietro released another panicked exhale and smacked his forehead. “I haven’t given him anything.”

“I’d still love you, president or not, Comedy Central. That’s what matters. Look, we can worry about this when we’re making our roster, but I really, really want to enjoy this week with you. I’ve missed you so much,” Olesya replied, tucking her bangs behind her ear as Pietro gave her a kiss on the forehead. Suddenly, like a burst of lightning, she straightened her pose. “I have to tell you something.”

Pietro’s hands looped her waist. “What is it?”

“The job in Kyiv. Here. The University... I was accepted. I’m so sorry, I’ve been so preoccupied with the drive and Lyosha and—“

Olesya didn’t have time to finish before Pietro was spinning his wife around, his face glowing. “I knew you would! Gosh, my wife, professor at Ukraine’s second-finest institution. Besides Lviv Art, of course.” Brown eyes shining, he dipped his wife as she wrapped his arms around his shoulders.

“How soon we forget,” she replied, beaming up at him and coming in for a kiss. This beautiful moment, of course, was interrupted by the knocking of a door, the sound of a few footsteps scurrying towards it, the twisting of a doorknob, and a horrified yelp from Olesya’s dearly beloved stepbrother.

“Where’s Pietro Semynovich?”

Posed in the door with snowflakes entangled in wild blonde hair was (de facto) President Alla Pivovarova of the Donbass’s upper half. Thrown over her shoulder like a primely selected sack of potatoes was Misha Slobodyan, Alla’s presidential second half.

“Like I’d ever tell you!” Olexey gasped, pressed against the wall, hands searching for a potential weapon. Standing like a true soldier, he jabbed a lamp in Alla’s face. “Get out of my country.”

“Your country? Who are you?” Alla bent at the knees, keeping a hand slung over an unconscious Misha as she slipped off her high heels. “This is Pietro Semynovich’s country, as far as I’m concerned, and I would like to speak with him, please.”

“Well I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” Olexey stuttered.

“Or what? You’ll bludgeon me with a lamp? Golly, I’m horrified. Shaking in my nonexistent boots. Please, can I have the pleasure of knowing your name? Handsome man.” Alla shook the snowflakes from her nest of hair and draped the poor unconscious man across her back, gripping onto his feet and wrists. Olexey shook his head and Alla grumbled. “Fine, be that way. I need to talk to Pietro.”

“I’m here,” Pietro said, standing like a proper soldier in his oversized hoodie and with one arm wrapped protectively around Olesya, who also happened to be armed with a lamp. “What do you want?” he asked, sounding more exhausted than menacing. 

“Oh, Pietro Semynovich, you know. Me and my dear friend Misha— you know him better as Olek, say hi!” She raised one of his limp wrists in a mock wave, and grinned back at an unamused Pietro. Alla furrowed her brows at the flat response and continued with an increasing urgency. “We were out in Kyiv, because, as you know, for all the Christians out there, they get this week off. And I’m no Christian, just to preface. Nor is he. Or any of us, I think, really. But that is beyond the point, darling Semynovich. Because Misha over here had far too many vodkas and beers for a man of his small stature, hm? And this is not regular vodka I’m discussing. This is full-on backwater alleyway crap. So, yeah, too much, I’m carting his fat ass through the snow, and I’m right by the Maidan. What’s right by the Maidan? Pietro Semynovich’s house. Boom. Here she is, your lady of the night. Obviously, can’t stay in any hotels. Can’t really do all that hostel crap either, us two prefer the luxury lifestyle. So, dear Pietro...” she took a deep breath, steadying her words with a smile. “I’d be eternally grateful, if, in all your kind hospitality, would house Misha and I. Just for the evening.”

The room was in silence for a lingering moment, as Pietro calculated his next move, his next line, adding onto his everlasting improv skit.

“And what’s in it for me, Alla Mykolayvnia?”

“I would owe you one.” In a perfect, political universe, this conversation would be conducted with much more dignity, formality, and grace, with talks of accords and treaties and quid pro quo intertwined in rivers of red tape. This isn’t a perfect world, however, and in this world, a President of Ukraine, his fiancè, his soon-to-be brother-in-law, are bent over a couple of prominent, criminal, and dangerous political rivals, one of which is blackout drunk. This means the red tape can be ducked, and Pietro ducks with it, descending down the majestic row of stairs and meeting Alla’s side. 

“How big of an owe-me-one, Alla?”

“Define big.”

“That’s what she said.”

Cue collective groan.

“Alright, alright. How about something… diplomatic? A peace treaty, perhaps, and then we can all go home and be happy and end this stupid conflict that’s gone on way longer than it should.” Pietro flashed some weak jazz hands.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I was thinking more like beating up Zhenya Morosov or Ben Hunter for you, personally, but I’ll give some thought to that offer, Pietro.”

“And you say that with honesty?”

“Well, we have witnesses here, don’t we?” Alla tilted her head in the direction of Olesya and Olexey, still standing slack-jawed and shocked in their original positions, frozen in place. “Sure. I say it with honesty.”

Normally, this transaction would involve a document of sorts, but instead, “Pinky promise?”

“I pinky promise,” Alla declared, linking her pinky with his. 

Pietro nodded, pulling his hand back and wiping it on his sweater. “And you better stick to it. I believe there’s a few vacant rooms on the upper floors, why don’t you go have a look?”

Shifting Misha across her back and studying Pietro with narrowed eyes, then shifting her focus to Olexey, then Olesya. “Your wife’s hot,” she commented.

“Fiancé,” Olexey snapped, once again jabbing the lamp in Alla’s face. 

“In-law, I’m assuming? Still don’t have the pleasure,” she offered a hand to Olexey, who was quick to swat it away.

“No.” 

“Have it your way, handsome,” she turned away, heading up the stairs. “And put the lamp down. It makes you look like an idiot. A man like you could use a sword, or something.” Shifting Misha once again into her arms, as if he were a bride on her wedding day, she glanced at Olesya. “And you’re… Olivia?”

“Olesya Ilyanova.” With her hands folded behind her back and knees pressed together, Olesya offered a nervous smile. 

“Olya…” Alla nodded, turning back to face a stoic Pietro. “Lucky guy. Alright. Night, losers.”

The blonde head of hair and her second half disappeared into the darkness of the second floor, and everyone seemed to shift. Pietro crouched, hands on his knees, releasing a long-held breath, Olexey collapsed against the wall, and Olesya folded onto the banister.

“Great, Pietro, now you’re hosting an alcohol poisoned war criminal and his weird-somewhat-girlfriend. What in god’s name were you thinking?!” Olexey snapped, slamming his hand into his face as he slid to the floorboards. 

“I wasn’t,” he muttered, head in his hands as he leaned against the counter.

“Well we can’t just kick them out now!” Olesya exclaimed, joining her family as she scaled down the stairs. “Can we?”

“Why would I actually feel bad if we kicked them out?” Olexey muttered, pushing his hair out of his face. “They’re evil people.”

“Yeah, they’re evil, but they’re human, and if there’s one thing this will do, it’s hopefully convince them to make a deal with me. Look. There’s no Russia anymore. There’s no reason for them to be holding onto something that isn’t there, despite their own experiences and vendettas that are causing them to feel this way. Maybe we can change their minds?” Pietro said, gesturing haplessly as he took a seat.

“Can people like that be changed?” Olesya asked, pulling her stepbrother up with an outstretched arm.

“I don’t know about Alla that much. She’s just weird. But Misha Slobodyan? That’s a war criminal. And he’s gotten away with it too, Pietro! And nobody cares! You’re just going to be complicit in that?” Olexey grabbed Olesya’s hand and pulled her aside.

Pietro tapped his fingers on the table. “No, no, of course not. You’re right, he needs to be taken care of. I’ve neglected it, and I’m sorry. But maybe this’ll change things, hm? I think we can finally bring him to justice after this. But they’re people too, and--”

“Alright, I’ve had enough. Olesya.” Olexey released her hand, trudging upstairs and not looking back as he shut an upstairs door behind him. Olesya stared at her feet, deep in thought.

“Olya-”

“No, I see what you’re doing. You don’t have to explain yourself to me, I’ve seen it. We went to school in Lviv, we saw all of this firsthand. And I know you’ve been busy with the whole Hunter-Nielsen thing, I- I get it. Okay? I get it,” she inhaled, lifting her head to face her fiance. “And I don’t even think they intend to hurt us. Maybe you’re right. Maybe this’ll change things? Nobody’s gotten anywhere in the past 20 years. Just fighting.” Olesya turned to look out the window. Snow piled outside, and Alla’s footprints were just barely visible on the lawn. “Perhaps you’ll be the first to actually change things.”

“... I hope.” Pietro tried to smile reassuringly, but his attempt failed as his anxiety ate at him.

Olesya’s face fell, and she put her hands on her diaphragm, keeping her eyes off Pietro’s nervous expression. “How- why did she say that?”

“Say what?” 

“She said you know him better as Olek. Misha. I thought that was his first name, is it not?”

Pietro bit his lip and pushed his dark hair away from his face. “Olek Mikhailnovych. He goes by Misha, his patronym. Vasylovich told me that.” 

She turned to look at him again, her face betraying disbelief. He glanced at his feet, lips pursed. Olesya walked over, gave him a kiss on the cheek and grabbed his hand. “Alright. You’ll be fine. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

She disappeared upstairs, and a creaky door was shut gently behind her. The first floor was dim, the only light beaming from the kitchen and the dying fire in the furnace. Pietro waited, shut off the lights in the kitchen, then doused a cup of water on the last of the flames. A chill seeped through the room and a shiver ran down Pietro’s spine as he walked up the old staircase. He passed the second floor, past his sleeping guests and relatives, and up to the third floor. At the top of the stairs, he groped the ceiling, and found the wire that hung loose from the top. The attic opened, a cloud of dust dropping with it.

Maneuvering inside, trying to keep warm as he started digging through the old boxes, Pietro pulled his sweater over his hands, holding himself tight as he started through an old cardboard box. He was certain this was where he had left it.

His eyes didn’t see it as he searched through the rows of folded blankets and old shirts, stuff his future family wouldn’t think twice to look at, but his hands found the old scrapbook with haste, and he dropped it onto the floor, sweeping away layers of dust. The single faint light in the attic was enough for him to find the exact photo as his fingers nervously slipped through the pages, anxious and unnerved, either from the cold or his own apprehension. 

This was the page. He remembered the soft tear on the top-right corner, now browned with age and disregard. Stuffed in the spine was a movie stub for something he didn’t quite recall seeing, and to the right of it was the photo. He remembered ripping it, trying to wear it down with a pencil tip and always dangling it above an open candle, but never having the heart to destroy it. For the longest time, he always wished he had. But now, Pietro began to feel as if his own apprehension towards burning it up and watching the image morph and disappear had been correct.

His fingers removed it from its plastic prison, and he cupped it in his hands, careful to not damage it more than he already had. With his breath still bated, and the dust stinging his eyes, Pietro held it beneath the dim orange light.

Two adolescent boys with acne-marked faces grinned at the camera. The colors were diluted with age, but the soft brown eyes and long face on one were unmistakable next to that indisputable red birthmark on the other’s face. Beneath the aged image was a vague date and caption, scratched in faded red ink. Pietro ran a finger across, sweeping away the grime and smeared ink, and let out a little exhale. His breath was visible in the frigidity of the attic.

Pietro + Olek, Donetsk City, 2015.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this at midnight and sat on it for 2 days

Morning came with the slowing of the snowfall to a light descent. The glow of the morning beamed off the hardened snow and Pietro found himself up as soon as the golden light touched the skyscrapers. He drew open the curtains and stared out at the milky gray sky, drenched in struggling sunshine. Creeping down the stairs, careful to stay on his toes, and sliding by Olexey and Olesya’s rooms, he found the room where Olek -- and, by extension Alla -- were staying. It was left ajar, and with a sharp inhale, he peeked inside.

Olek was enveloped in Alla’s arms, and both of them were still fast asleep. The former’s face was much more visible in the morning light, and Pietro took note of how pale and feverish he looked. As much as he wanted not to, he couldn’t help but notice the pit that had formed in his stomach. The little angel on his shoulder had been begging him to make the sensible choice all night, but Pietro’s consuming sense of guilt and responsibility overrode all his other instincts, and he found himself descending the stairs to the bottom floor. Next -- he put the kettle on the stove, and started searching through the doors for his medical kit. A thermometer, really, is what he needed. Pietro himself was never a drinker, and he really didn’t know anything about the dangers of alcohol poisoning, but he thought checking for a fever was the least he could do.

The kettle choked out a whistle, and Pietro switched off the stove and poured a cup of black tea.

19 years ago, a 11-year old Olek would have complained about how he preferred coffee because Papa said coffee was much stronger than tea, and a strong boy needs strong drinks. Which was a stupid thing to say, because Pietro had always been a tea person and was perfectly capable of strength. He could have benchpressed that motherfucker in an instant. So, he decided, Olek was going to have to deal with a hot cup of weak black tea. With the tea steaming on the counter, Pietro’s memory was finally jogged through the morning haze, and he hurried across the room, searching through the bottom cabinet and picking out the pointed thermometer. He made another dead march up the stairs, and as they creaked beneath his feet he began to wonder if he had made a mistake. But his feet pressed on, and he pushed the door open again, placing the tea besides the thermometer on an open nightstand. As he crouched next to the bed, he felt the pressure of a hand on his wrist, and looked up to find Olek staring at him.

“Petya Semynovich, been a while, hasn’t it?” Olek croaked, a grin creeping across his face. 

Pietro stared back, dumbfounded, and pulled his wrist away and got to his feet so that he was towering over the bedside. “You should go back to sleep. You seem quite ill.”

Olek laughed hoarsely and rolled over, wrapping his arms around a still asleep Alla. “Of course, Mr. President.”

Pietro made sure to slam the door behind him.

“Ungrateful bastard.” Pietro muttered to himself as he descended downstairs, trying to shake off the sense of exhaustion that still weighed down on him. As he rounded his way into the kitchen, he heard the sizzle of the stove and looked up to face Olesya, busy with an egg on the stove. “You’re up?” he asked, slouching into an open seat.

“Went for a walk,” Olesya replied, flashing a half-smile. “You alright?”

“I feel like I didn’t sleep a wink! Christ. Thank goodness it’s vacation,” Pietro rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Hey. I’m sorry about last night. I woke up hoping it was a bad dream.”

Olesya shrugged and lifted the pan from the stove and shut it off. “Egg?”

Pietro shook his head and looked back out the window. Olesya poked her scrambled egg with her fork and gazed at her forlorn fiancé. “When they wake up, you should make them leave. I don’t think this stress is good for you.”

“Ol- Misha’s sick. I’m certain of it. I checked. He looks awful. I don’t want to throw a sniffling— pansy out into the snow,” he mumbled.

“Your empathy is admirable. I think you have to make a choice here though.”

Pietro ran a hand through his hair. “What do you think?”

Olesya twirled her fork and frowned. “Well, no matter how much I hate them as politicians or whatever, they’re still people. You’re right about that. And it’s easy to think that they’re just misled, but at this point… well, the Russians have been vanished for so long you’d think it would click for them at some point that what they’re fighting for is gone.” She set the fork down and sighed heavily, drumming her fingers on the tableside. “Don’t know. Fine with Alla, I don’t think she’s bad bad. There are worse politicians then her. Not sure about Misha. He’s… difficult to pin down.” Olesya groaned and pinched her nose. “You’d think since my job is analyzing historical figures and breaking them down for children, I’d be able to break down and analyze breathing people with thoughts and living hearts and souls and motivations and ideas.”

Pietro cupped his face in his hands. “The human condition can be simplified after death, perhaps. Like, I guess it’s easy to break it all down into cause and effect when you’re looking at it from far away. The lines are blurred when you’re up close.”

Olesya nodded and stirred the remains of egg on her plate.

“So what do you think I should do?” Pietro asked. “Human condition factored in and all.”

“Why don’t we play as we go along? Consider this an extension of a very long improv skit,” Olesya said with a shrug.

“Presidency’s a comedy act and all the presidents and politicians merely comedians,” Pietro rolled his eyes and sunk into the chair. “Pardon my language, but fuck.”

“Pardoned. Certain situations call for such language.” Olesya raised her eyebrows and dumped her empty pan in the sink, black hair falling over her shoulders. Pietro watched, distant, and sucked in a breath.

“I lied.”

She turned, pushing the hair away from her face. “... Alright. About what?”

Pietro got up from his chair and walked to the staircase. He turned his head to look at the ceiling where the attic waited.

“Follow me. I have a long story to tell you.”

*

The public doesn’t know much about Pietro Naumenko. He’s a freshman, after all. What the public knows, or at least what his Wikipedia page says, outlines his childhood — Pietro Semynovich Naumenko was born in 2004 to a Ukrainian novelist and Kazakh chef. He was raised Jewish and lived a humble home life. In 2022 he graduated primary school and studied writing at Lviv Academy of the Arts, where he became a local standup comedian who satirized politics and pointed out flaws in the long-standing political structure with grace and humor. He began a relationship with one one Olesya Ilyanova Shevchenka in 2027, when they met in Lviv, and he first landed a political job working beside her step-brother in the Energy Sector. This leewayed him into parliament as his skits gained more and more traction. He won a presidential election in 2034, ousting veteran Boris Vasylovich, running as an independent and on a single prayer.

This is a story that makes sense. A true European marvel. It’s the story that earns Pietro most of his praise, most of his criticism, and it’s the one that he sticks to. 

But it’s not entirely true.

Pietro Naumenko was indeed born in Kharkiv, 313 kilometers west of Donetsk City. He was born in a taxi cab on the way to the hospital, and his Kazakh chef mother cradled him as his Ukrainian novelist father talked to the emergency operator in hysterics. 

Two days after, with his newborn, taxi-born self bundled in hospital blankets and his parents still dressed in their clothes from 2 days ago, Pietro took his first train ride back to Donetsk City.

The only reason he quite knew Olek Mikhailnovych Slobodyan was because his father was also Kazakh, and Pietro’s mother would get on quite well with him. Mikhail Slobodyan was wealthy, unmarried after Olek’s late mother passed, and Christian. Olek had a big white house with black shutters, where he was educated at home, and Pietro had a small apartment in a tall brick building, and he went to school with other Jewish children on the city’s outskirts.

Pietro often stayed at the Slobodyans’ big white house for days on end, roaming through the long hallways and playing with Olek, still young and still blissfully unaware of poverty and pain. He is familiarized with the sound of gunfire and distant bombs and fire in the sky and sees it as normal. He’s too busy playing with his friend with the weird birthmark and funny accent to even mind.

In 2015, the Naumenkos divorced. His father disappeared. Where to? Pietro doesn’t know. His mother says he’s off in Belarus, seeking inspiration. She stays in Donetsk with her son and the Slobodyans, despite the bloody war that rages around them. Olek brings him to the park and they skip rocks, he says he’s going to be a soldier one day. Pietro says he wants to be a writer like his dad. Or maybe he’ll choose the religious life, after all, his Rabbi says his Yiddish is excellent. Olek looks back out and says how boring, and skips another rock across the black waters. 

In 2022 the boys are ready to become men. Pietro is attending his dream school and graduates goth and much too familiar with the monotony of endless war. Olek raves to him about the military exam he’s about to take to Pietro for days and days, and Pietro smiles, not having the heart to tell him what a horrible mistake he’s making. The night before, as Olek chats on the phone, Pietro, gloomy and flat-speeched, says, “Why are you so excited to hurt people?” and hangs up. 

Olek fails the exam anyway, something about his height, or maybe his weight? Maybe the splotchy red mark on his face, too, even though that has little to do with it. Pietro is shunned from the white house with black shutters, and he doesn’t see Olek again before he’s whisked onto the cross-country train to Lviv. The guards at the Donetsk border study his passport and ticket and look the boy up and down. He smirks.

“What brings you to Lviv, boy?”

“College.”

“Have fun.”

And he is free. He comes back once or twice to see his ailing mother, and he buries her in 2026. Pietro visits the white house with black shutters, a proper, innocuous schoolboy, but it is empty and dark.

And that’s Pietro Naumenko’s childhood. He never hears from his father or Olek Slobodyan again. Until Olek’s name often makes the news, and Pietro finds himself stuffing envelopes in the Energy office, glazed on the TV and watching a fanatic boy he once knew declare that he’s increasing the war effort and insisting that Ukraine will never move to the west. He insists with pride that he will take back Luhansk and Crimea and form a New Russia that will crush Vasylich’s pathetic dream of earning Ben Hunter’s support. Olek— no, Misha, after his father— is a bit too enthusiastic, and only wins back Luhansk after he wins Alla’s support. He’s a loose cannon who does nothing but elongate war when there should be peace, and Pietro feels sick again.

When he wins the election, the first thing he remembers after spending the night partying with his fiancé and his campaign team is that he’ll have to confront Misha Slobodyan. No, he never meets him face to face, it seems, rather, Misha decides to increase the war effort and says he won’t fall for this new figurehead’s false promises of neutrality and a better election and referendum policy. His calls are sent to voicemail and the war in Donetsk has been prolonged longer than it needs to be.

Until now, it seems.

*

Olesya and Pietro sit cross-legged on the floor of the attic, particles of dust drifting through the dim light like snow. She stares for a long time at the image, and looks over the scrapbook wordlessly multiple times. Pietro says nothing else as she keeps checking and rechecking the damaged photo, trying to discern whether for certain that that’s her fiancé next to the birthmark. She skirts the pictures, looking for more, any more, searching for any sign that this should have been more obvious and that she should have known that Misha’s reaction to Pietro’s election was unusually personal for him, and that’s why he’s so hard to pin down. Because Misha Slobodyan’s a calculated and ruthless military boy who doesn’t stoop to personal and spontaneous games, at least not before last April. It all makes sense now, but why did it take her so long to figure it out?

There’s no more pictures of Misha in the scrapbook, she figures. Pietro rid himself of nearly all of them, besides the one.

Finally, she gently sets the photograph back down. “No more?”

He shakes his head. “Destroyed.”

She looks at her hands. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know,” Pietro murmured. He stared at his own hands, calloused and long. “I’m sorry. Truly, Olya, I’m sorry. I should have been honest with you from the moment I met you, and if you’re angry with me, I— I understand.”

“Pietro, I don’t— I don’t know. I’m not as angry as you think I am, I think I just need some time. This is… a lot, you understand that, right? A lot.”

Pietro nodded, guilty as charged.

Olesya huffed. She pulled on her ponytail. “I just need some time to figure all of this out. I’m gonna go for a walk.” As she descended down the latter, she heard him mutter an I love you.

“I love you too,” she shot back, dropping to the floor and heading back down the staircase. The second floor is unusually quiet— she checked Olexey’s room, and he’s still fast asleep. Then, quiet as a mouse, she tiptoed across the floorboards to the other room. Squinting through the crack in the door, she sees Misha, wadded up in the covers with an empty cup of tea in his hands. He doesn’t see her before she heads back down the stairs. When Olesya reached the bottom, placing her hand on the wall to steady herself, a realization clicked in her mind. If Alla wasn’t with Misha— where could she be?

Olesya searched through the living room, then in the kitchen and the open guest rooms on the bottom floor. While bent to pick up some toppled picture frames, the unmistakable smell of cigar smoke hit her nose. 

It only took her a moment to find the nest of blonde hair sitting on the porch, cigar in mouth, door wide open. Staring out into the city, Alla didn’t even notice her visitor before she opened her mouth.

“What’s the point of smoking outside if you’re not going to close the door?” Olesya asked.

Alla turned, a look of surprise and disbelief on her face. Olesya flashed a bitter smile down at her and slammed the glass door shut behind her as she joined her guest on the porch. “Like that.”

“Wow. My apologies, princess,” Alla scoffed, sticking her cigar back in her mouth. “Thought you looked too soft to be mean.”

“Yeah, well, I’m mean as hell!” Olesya declared, placing her hands on her hips as Alla watched, unfazed. 

“Alright.” 

Breathing a sigh through her nose, Olesya took a chair opposite Alla, turning out to gaze at the gray city as well.

“You seem oddly calm for a woman in your position,” Alla commented, looking Olesya up and down with a cocked eyebrow.

“My mother always said to be poised in awful situations, and to think before you respond.”

“Then she was a wise woman.”

Olesya crossed her arms and glanced at Alla, who extinguished her cigar on the frostbitten wood. “You’re not bad.”

“Excuse me?”

“Slobodyan is bad. But you’re not bad in a way that he is, you’re just complicit,” Olesya said.

Alla slapped her thigh, letting out a cackle before she turned to look at Olesya. “No, I’m not as bad as he is, not for a moment. But I’m my own person, we’re not a fucking unit. Just because he’s always with me doesn’t mean I always have to agree with him. Or like him. He’s the one who dragged me into this, anyways.”

Olesya raised her eyebrows, leaning forward with her head resting on her fist. “Oh, do say more.”

Alla choked out another disbelieving laugh. “Olya Ilyanova. Tell me, Olya Ilyanova, what is your profession?”

“I am a professor of history. With a specialization in the 18th century revolutionary period. Take that as you will.” Olesya put her hands behind her head and turned away.

“You know, I think all war starts with revolution. Would you agree?”

“How so?”

Alla shifted, tucking her blonde hair behind her ears. “Well, I guess you could say all wars begin with revolution, but not all revolutions begin with war. And it doesn’t have to be a revolution against the government. It can be a revolution against an ideology, an idea, a religion, a practice. Like, wars about religion, right? And territory? I guess those could all be seen as revolutions against the status quo, what is socially accepted as true or definite. I’m not making much sense, now, am I?”

Olesya froze, and then shrugged. “I— I think it makes sense, your thoughts. The thing about history is that there are so many arguments that make it up, and you can’t really view it through an objective lens. History is subjective. Of course, events are absolute, but reasoning is never black and white. It’s messy and it’s confusing and there’s no right type of history. That’s why I love it, I suppose.”

“Smart,” Alla muttered. “This started as a revolution, but it’s not like we’re fighting for anything. We’re fighting for a dead idea. It just feels useless, because no matter how hard you fight, the end result always comes, and everything just seems so… bleak.”

“I’m sorry. You don’t have much control over anything, do you?”

“I guess I never thought to use what control I had and now it’s completely gone. Oh,” Alla sniffled, tossing her hair back over her shoulders. “How depressing. I think my main motivation is just spite, now.” 

Olesya rose to her feet, placing her hand on Alla’s shoulder. “I hope that you regain it enough to make the right decision.”

With that, the door shut behind her once again, leaving Alla on the porch. She lit another cigar.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> go crazy ahh go stupid

If there’s one thing Pietro was certain he knew about Olek, it was that he didn’t know anything. 

Sure, their childhoods had overlapped. They found themselves raised in the midst of a conflict that ripped families in half and turned the blacktop red. They shared candy bars and CDs, trips to the movies, and answers to school work, but that person had been so erased by time that Pietro wasn’t sure how much was left. In fact, he was so certain that the Olek that he used to know, the boy who tutored his classmates after school and helped Pietro’s mother in the kitchen and spent hours helping the librarians sort books had been replaced entirely. Replaced by some doppleganger who crawled in one of those shuttered windows and adopted a new name and a punchable smirk. 

In a rather improvised decision, Pietro dropped the scrapbook in its box and began to descend the ladder, the cardboard box tucked underneath his arm. Careful to keep quiet as the floorboards creaked beneath the weight of the box, he climbed back up, beginning a repetitive process of bringing the boxes down one at a time. While he was in the dust-filled attic, sifting through the knick-knacks, the sound of footsteps ascending the stairs must have escaped him. For when Pietro stuck his head back down, box in hand, his eyebrows rose when he realized Olexey was bent over the antiques. 

“Olexey?”

Olexey looked over his shoulder and faced Pietro as he set the box down. “What are you doing?” he replied. Pietro then noticed that Olexey was wearing a nightgown and a pair of vibrant fluffy socks that stretched to his calves. Taking it as a sign of vulnerability, Pietro relaxed. The captain of the university’s improv team did what he does best, and replied. “Spring cleaning.”

“It’s December.” Olexey chucked the plastic racecar he was holding back into one of the boxes and took a seat on the ladder, watching Pietro through squinted eyes as he stood awkward and quiet. “And it seems impolite to clean when you have guests,” he continued.

“I know, should have done it earlier. Situation called for it, I suppose.”

“Oh, the situation where you accepted war criminals into the house. Right,” Olexey nodded.

“They’re not— Okay, yes, they are. But I have a plan, okay?” Pietro touched his forehead, frowned, and folded his hands on his chest. 

Olexey’s jaw went slack and he crossed his legs. “Yeah. A plan. The grand improvisational comedian has a plan, everyone!” he announced to the silent curios and cardboard. “What plan could you possibly have that your aides haven’t laid out for you?”

“A quid-pro-quo.”

“You’ve gotten a hang of the lingo.”

Pietro sighed, moving a few of the boxes aside with his foot and taking a seat on the floor. The wood whimpered beneath him and he leaned against the browning wallpaper. “Lyosha, be honest with me. What do you want?”

“A job. How about a better salary? I have a girlfriend too, you know, and I’m saving up for a ring,” Olexey announced, his cheeks growing pink.

Pietro smiled for a moment, but it was fleeting. “You know I can’t,” Pietro said, hollow. 

“Certainly you can. I did so much for you, you’re doing nothing for me. Besides dating my sister, and, you know, bringing violent insurgents into the household.”

“No, you don’t get it. They’re watching me. You know how corrupt this whole government is? I have an opportunity to fix that, dismantle this mess, and I can’t stoop to nepotism. Then they’d jump on that and I’ll be deposed and out in a week’s time. I can’t risk losing everything.”

Olexey let out a harsh exhale through his nose. “Who’s they, Semynovich? And, and, and, it wouldn’t be nepotism, no—“ he raised a hand as Pietro’s expression slipped back into disbelief. “I’m perfectly capable of being a minister. You see, I have my project. My energy project. This has been my whole life, my whole career, and I—“

“This isn’t a job interview, it was supposed to be fun.” Pietro said, sighing as he hugged his legs.

Olexey shifted, looping his arms around the ladder. “You’re some man,” he scoffed. “This is why I don’t want you marrying my sister. You can’t stick to promises.”

“I never promised you anything! You had me licking envelopes in the energy ministry and doing your boss’s work. You weren’t even a real politician yet, and neither was I. How was I supposed to know?”

“I just thought you may have appreciated what I did for you.”

Pietro got to his feet. “Of course I do.”

Olexey followed suit, pulling his socks up. “Then show it, don’t tell it.” He turned to head back down the stairs, before Pietro called out. 

“Lyosha, why do you hate me so much?”

That caught Olexey off-guard, and he found himself wobbling on one of the stairs, arms extended for balance. He sucked in a breath and smoothed the nightgown. “Because you take and never give. Olya needs someone who can give after everything that’s been taken from her,” he said. “And I don’t think you’re ready for that. But that’s what politics does to you, doesn’t it? Taking and never giving. Maybe I’m some hypocrite, then.”

They stood in complete silence for a moment, before Olexey’s farewell came in the sound of footsteps descending the stairs. The sound ebbed, and Pietro found himself alone again with his boxes full of memories.

***

If there’s one thing that Misha knew for certain about Pietro, it was that he was the weakest man he had ever had the displeasure of knowing.

Olek ‘Misha’ Mikhailnovych Slobodyan sat in bed, wrapped in a blanket and one of Alla’s sweaters and with an empty cup of tea in hand. By the time he woke for the second time, the tea which Pietro had prepared for him had already gone lukewarm. He tried the thermometer and it said 100.3 F. Misha wondered where Pietro could have gotten an American thermometer, but decidedly the verdict from it was not the best. He first tried sticking his head out the window and feeling the cold winter air on his face and then measuring his fever again. The murky numbers displayed the same sad result and he melted into the covers. There was no getting past it — Misha was ill, in Kyiv, in the Maidan, in Petya’s house of all places.

When he poked his head out of the room, his head still a fog from the previous night and his stomach nauseated, he supported himself on the doorframe and listened intently for shoes or movement. Nothing? Nothing. Creeping like the soldier he was, he checked the other rooms on the second floor — empty, besides Petya’s study, stacked to the ceiling with papers and manila folders. He made a mental note to search through it later, and started down the stairs. Misha noted the creak of the stairs, the browning ceiling and dusty nooks beneath the banister. He felt the opposing wall with a free hand, running his fingers over the intricate patterns and panelling in the cured wood. Nobody greeted him when he arrived downstairs, not that anybody would want to. 

Misha wiped his nose, and taking care and grace with each movement, walked from the stairs to the foyer. From where he stood, shoeless and sockless and huddled in an undersized hoodie and his pants from the night before, he discerned Pietro’s wife, what he could only assume was another relative, and Alla. At least, the back of their heads.

Pietro’s wife — what was her name, Olivia? — was standing over the oven, hair pulled into a ponytail as she mixed a bowl with a wooden spatula. Beside her was a red mixer, a dirtied bowl on its basin. He peeked the high number on the stove and thought about a pie or a cake. In the living room, which one had to walk through the kitchen to get to, sat the other one, a mess of curly hair with the light of a television on his face. The voices on the television were a hush, and from the crease of the relative’s mouth, Misha concluded he wasn’t watching at all, rather lost in his own thoughts. At last, Alla sat on the porch, legs up on the table and a cigar in her mouth. For once, that hair of hers had been pulled up into a tight bun and she looked much more kempt than usual. Out of all of these people, none of them were exactly who Misha was looking for. For a single instant, Misha entertained joining Alla on the porch, but the sliding door was only accessible through the kitchen, and he wasn’t keen to incite the attention of Olivia. 

Silent and still not spotted by any of the housemates, Misha turned to the front door. Thrown on the coat rack was a threaded brown trenchcoat and a blue scarf tossed haphazard across one of the prongs. There was a pair of boots, too, unlaced and laying on their side. He grabbed them. The rack tilted, making a thump as it balanced itself back, but by the time Olesya had turned to look, the front door was already open and shut, leaving nothing but a brief winter breeze. “Pietro?”

She walked over to the window of the kitchen, which faced the front yard, still caked with snow. When she saw the figure moving across the field, then to the crosswalk, her eyebrows raised when she spotted the birthmark. He was lacing up a loose and unzipped pair of boots. His eyes didn’t meet hers, and she vanished back into the kitchen, drawing the curtain behind her.

Misha hurried across the street, keeping his head down, the modest house moving further and further away. As he shifted over the sidewalk, covering his face from the other pedestrians and ignoring the expletives muttered when he bumped into someone, he arrived at the place that he knew he just had to go to.

The Maidan Nezalezhnosti waited for him. The square. 

Euromaidan was nearly 20 years ago. That revolution that would bring Ukraine into the pit of war and unrest as its neighbors looked on with bated breath. Donetsk and Luhansk and Crimea and Russia and the European Union all blurred together as Misha stood on the brick and concrete, facing the remnants of a candle memorial which had been set up beside the fountain. Of course, the candles had been extinguished by the fountain, and the fountain turned into ice. His breath was a cloud of white smoke in the air. Misha blew into his hands, rubbing them for the littlest bit of heat and pressed them into his face. His eyes were welling with tears. From the cold? From the pure emotion of standing in the site that created the domino effect of Misha and Pietro’s separate but intertwined fates, 709 kilometers away in a city still plagued with violence?

Misha straightened his head and inhaled a sad sigh. This was the cost of independence, he thought, this is the cost of war and fighting for a lost cause. But if you don’t have something to fight tooth and nail for, something to bleed and hurt for, what’s left of a soldier?

Misha only wished he had a lighter.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you can’t kill me in a way that matters

Olesya Stefanivna Shevchenka had been born in Lviv, to two working-class parents of little wealth and status. The border city was where she grew up and it was the place she knew like the back of her hand, always an arm’s length away from Poland or Hungary. The gateway to the West. As a little girl, she always wondered why they never went on vacation there. The photographs from those Baltic beaches amazed her. Those historic churches and green fields fascinated her more than anything Lviv’s monotony could provide. Her Mama and Papa always resisted, however, and she had learned to accept it.

Everything in her life, she’d learned to accept. Even if it wasn’t what she exactly wanted, it was the hand she was dealt, and she’d have to continue playing with it. When she was pulled out of her private school and placed back in the public school district, she didn’t complain or make a fuss. When her clothes were filled with holes and tied back together with discolored thread, she didn’t say anything. When her parents talked about the war in the East over dinner, she kept silent and oblivious, a sponge soaking up spilled information and saving it for a time when it would come in handy. Her refuge was the school library, where she would spend hours and hours peeling through encyclopedias and Wikipedia pages, piecing together a tapestry of current events and contemporary history.

When she was 13, and when her beloved Mama was diagnosed with something called breast cancer, she had to accept that. She had to accept those days over the hospital bed, the day where her Mama closed her eyes for the last time, and when the doctor handed her a pamphlet entitled Grieving, through her blurred vision she could just make out the final stage -- Acceptance. It seemed as if that was the stage that would remain stagnant throughout the rest of her life. This idea of acceptance, of never getting what you want and waiting for it to come back to you. Olesya was fine with waiting, and she was fine with living with hollow duplicates of everything she wanted and inside of her Mama’s ghostly shadow.

Papa didn’t mourn in the same way. Olesya started to think he hadn’t loved Mama at all. He must have loved Mama to have a child with her, to stay with her until the very end, but rather than walk with a weight on his shoulders with eyes that told a story of loss, Papa seemed rather glad that he had his weight lifted. He seemed brighter, better, talked with an enthusiasm he formerly lacked. And it was with this enthusiasm he married a widowed woman of means, with two houses and a lavish closet and who often had vacations to those amazing Baltic beaches. Miss Ruslana Myronenkova, or as Olesya was told to call her, Miss Rusya, was a wealthy woman with a kind and aged face, with smile lines and wrinkles around her eyes. She had a child, Olexey, who was about 2 years older than Olesya and often hid behind his mother with frightened eyes and a mop of curly hair. Olesya would later realize that Ruslana’s late husband Dmitry was an oligarch of Ukraine’s political scene, a high-ranking official in the military’s cabinet. That explained the startling wealth. That explained many things.

It was with Miss Rusya whisking the Shevchenkos off to Kyiv that Papa seemed to have forgotten all about his old life. All about Olesya and Mama and the tattered clothing and compound apartment and the public school on the city’s outskirts. Papa fit right into Miss Rusya’s opulent lifestyle, attending her banquets in his new selection of dress shirts and shoes with actual soles. Miss Rusya spoiled Olesya rotten, of course, dressing her up in frilly gowns and skirts and teaching her how to do her makeup and act like a proper lady. She attended an all-girls school with uniforms and classes that had new books and the latest technology. It was almost as if everything Olesya had known had been ripped from her, her last connections to Mama replaced with cold and unfamiliar layers of gold and silver. Olesya didn’t complain, though, and kept her mother’s knicknacks beneath her bed and hung out in the corners of the ballrooms with Olexey. She found refuge in her new life in her own little corners and within her memories.

The new marriage reached a head, though, when Olesya turned 17. She knew by then that she wanted to be a teacher. Maybe, just maybe, she’d continue Mama’s pottery and jewelry-making hobby as well. Papa, and even Miss Rusya, had different plans for her. It was on the day after her seventeenth birthday where Miss Rusya showed Olesya a picture of a boy, not much older than Olesya herself. “Cute, isn’t he?”

Olesya nodded.

“I think you’d be a perfect wife for him.”

She froze. “Excuse me?”

Miss Rusya looked at Olesya quizzically, as if she had just broken an unspoken rule of the household. “Well, you do want to get married, don’t you?”

“Well, I’d like to attend school first.”

That was when Papa interjected. “I’ve met the man’s father. Quite a marvel. Olesya, darling, really, think of the opportunity.”

“Your father’s right. And all the time you’ll save!”

“I need some time to think about it.” That was Olesya’s mitigated way of saying absolutely not. She had enjoyed the luxury Miss Rusya brought her, but this ploy was nothing but a trap to keep Olesya in this lifestyle she could no longer live. She didn’t want to live out the role of a future oligarch’s long-suffering bride. She had accepted all of the hands she was given until she was dealt the whole deck, her faceless opponent beaming with glee. It was her turn to deny what she had been taught to accept.

Lviv was waiting for her. She didn’t tell anyone except Olexey, trapped in his rigorous Kyiv university campus. She accepted a gracious scholarship from a Lviv college oriented towards the arts, and left her Papa and stepmother behind with a letter and a homemade pie.

***

“He left?!”

“For the last time, I saw him leaving,” Olesya replied, leaning against the kitchen counter. The kitchen was warm with the oven on and the homely smell of Olesya’s cherry pie was filling the room. Pietro and Olexey were congregated around the island, while Alla sat on a barstool, legs crossed and looking an unusual degree of unbothered.

Pietro sighed, pinching his nose. “He’s going to get himself killed. Either in the snow or by somebody else. What’s he thinking?”

“He isn’t,” Alla muttered. “I know where he went.”

Everyone’s head swiveled to look at Alla, inquisitive and confused, and she cringed. “Idiots. He’s at the Maidan, probably. Kept moaning and groaning last night about how he wanted to see it. I never took him for a history buff, but…”

“It must be an emotional thing,” Pietro said. “The Maidan is where it all started. I don’t know, maybe it makes sense. This whole conflict started because of what happened there, and he’s been drawing it on for many years longer than it needed to be drawn on. Should we go look for him?”

Alla threw open the curtains and poked her head out of the kitchen’s window. She looked back and forth and smelled the air and leaned back in. “He’ll be back. It’ll probably start snowing soon.”

Olesya bent to study her cherry pie, placed neat and proper in the oven. “Well, I sure hope so.”

“It’s not like he can go anywhere,” Olexey offered. “What, is he gonna walk the 700 kilometers back to Donetsk? I don’t think so. If he hitched a ride he’d probably get thrown out onto the street once they saw his face. If he took public transportation they’d literally throw him under the bus. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go besides the house and the outdoors. I think he’ll come back here.”

Pietro nodded, slow and steady, and leaned on the counter. “Jesus. I’m sorry, guys, this went horribly wrong, didn’t it?”

“You’re certainly a great host,” Alla interjected, cocking an eyebrow at him.

“Can we just relax? Like this was supposed to be? Relaxing?” Pietro asked, shooting a silencing look over at Alla. “I would love for this to function as a normal family gathering. With some friends, of course…”

Alla snapped back, “Don’t patronize me,” and dropped from her place on the countertop, briskly walking to the screen door. “You can have family fun together. I don’t give a shit. You don’t have to babysit me.” With that, the screen slammed shut behind her. Cold air flooded into the room, and the three who remained shivered.

“I thought you told me you had a plan,” Olexey grumbled. “Now you’ve pissed her off.”

“I do. I do have a plan,” Pietro insisted, looking back at the blonde head of hair before closing the fraying wooden door.

“Sweetheart, why don’t you have a slice of pie, and we can talk about this?” Olesya crouched in front of the oven, feeling the warmth on her face as she lowered the door. “Hm?”

An answer came in the form of Pietro sliding into his chair as Olexey watched. “I’d like a slice of pie too.”

Olesya sat the pie on the table and sat down, the oven shutting behind her with a beep. “We don’t need to worry about them. What matters is we’re all here, and we’re a family.” She joined hands with her brother and fiancé with the warmth of the oven transferred to her hands. With a squeeze, she let them feel the warmth too. “And I want you two to get along, even if you don’t see eye to eye on everything.”

“Thank you, Olya,” Olexey said curtly. Pietro said nothing, twirling his fork with an expression that betrayed guilt. “Would you like a slice of pie?”

“Why not?” Olesya picked up the blade and embedded the knife into the pie, cutting a triangle and sliding it onto an empty plate. “Look. I know you think that these people are awful, terrible, evil monsters, but they’re more grateful for your kindness than you know, Petya. You think Svetlana Arsic would just let Mr. K camp out at her house? Probably not. They’ll at least appreciate it, even if they don’t want to make any deals at first.”

“You should at least try and compromise while they’re here,” Olexey offered, shoveling the pie into his mouth.

“Let’s sign a treaty in the president’s house during winter vacation,” Pietro said. “I’ll print it on the house printer.”

“You’ll at least make history!” Olesya snorted.

Like clockwork, the doorknob at the front began to jiggle. Everyone froze, eyes wide, as Olek Mikhailnovych Slobodyan stumbled through the front door, frozen tears on his face and his hands stuffed in the pockets of the jacket. When it closed shut behind him, he surveyed his surroundings, careful to remove his boots slowly. As soon as his knee touched the floor, however, he felt the three sets of eyes trained on him, and looked over at the kitchen.

He tried to glare. It didn’t work as he hoped.

“Pie?” Olesya asked, smiling.

Misha didn’t reply, just sat on the floor with his legs splayed as he removed his boots. From the way he sat, straddling the floor and struggling to remove the shoes, he looked almost like a young and unsure child. The triangulum waited until he entered the kitchen, rubbing his face and sniffling, to make a move.

“You’ve gotten worse,” Pietro commented. “Maybe going out into the snow wasn’t a good idea?”

“Shut up.”

“How about I put a cup of tea on the stove for you?” he offered.

Misha slouched in one of the seats and nodded, his arms crossed. “And I think we may have some cough syrup,” Pietro added, flipping the switch to the stove. “If you keep warm tonight, then you should be good to go by tomorrow.”

Olexey and Olesya hung back, watching this two-person game of charades continue as they huddled around the pie. “Would you like a slice of pie, mi- President Slobodyan?” she asked again. Or did he prefer General?

“No,” he mumbled, hands folded and back straightened. “But thank you.”

She smiled politely and grabbed her panicked stepbrother’s arm, dragging him into the living room. “Calm down. Why don’t we just stay here and let Petya handle it?”

“Right, let’s let the comedian handle the war criminal, why didn’t I think of that?”

“Lyosha, stop acting like a total idiot,” Olesya snapped. “If nobody’s clued you in on it yet, or if you haven’t figured it out, they know each other.”

Olexey rolled his eyes and scoffed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well of course they know each other. They’re both presidents of two respective countries.”

“No, Lyosha, they know each other,” Olesya continued, tapping her fingers together as Olexey tried to process what she was saying.

“I don’t quite understand?”

“Petya isn’t from Kharkiv. Let’s leave it at that. You can piece the rest of it together.”

“Wh- Olya?” Olexey whirled around, his eyebrows raised in shock. “You can’t just leave me with that. Olesya Stefanivna Shevchenka! Come back!”

Olesya stepped out from the sliding door of the living room and drew the curtain as the door slammed behind her. Alla turned to face her, extinguishing the cigar on the wooden porchside.

“Boys, huh?”

At Alla’s greeting, Olesya seemed to relax, taking a seat beside her. “Right.”

That left Pietro and Misha in the kitchen, the tea whistling on the stovetop. Misha kept quiet, now leaning over in his chair, pose relaxed and fingertips curved. Pietro leaned on the countertop. “You have a preference?”

“I would rather not have tea at all,” Misha snapped.

“Well, I’m not giving you a coffee at this hour.”

“It’s only six. My point stands!” Misha straightened up like a bolt and returned to his military stance, hands folded, shoulders tensed and jaw clenched.

Pietro turned to the stove and shut it off. “Green tea it is. Not caffeinated, and good for a sore throat and runny nose. Should fix that alcohol poisoning right up for you. And the head cold that you’re about to get from wandering around in the cold all evening. Are you hungry?”

“No,” Misha insisted, lips pursed.

Pietro set the teacup down in front of him with a cleaned fork. Circling around the table, he took a seat directly across from Misha with eager eyes. He pushed the pie towards him. “Come on now.”

Misha reddened and pressed his hands around the teacup. “No thank you.”

“Oh, I insist.”

“I can’t accept your gracious offer,” Misha repeated, his face an event of pink.

“Fine. More for me,” Pietro picked up his own fork and brought the tin back over to his side, humming as he cut a slice and placed it on his sauce and crumb-covered plate. “Remember when you helped my Mama in the kitchen? Your tortes were always delightful. I suppose I have a penchant for bakers.”

“Pietro,” Misha said, shooting a look at him. A warning shot. For a moment, though, Pietro could have sworn that the hard exterior had been momentarily put down, with Misha’s eyes softening and his voice shifting up a pitch.

“Olek…” Pietro began, outstretching his hand and pushing the pie tin back over.

“That isn’t my name.”

“Yes it is. You’ve always been Olek to me. You still are,” Pietro drummed his fingers on the table, and allowed his gaze to lock with Misha’s. “I know he’s in there somewhere.”

Misha stared at Pietro’s free hand, his mouth betraying a second of decisiveness. “No.”

“You aren’t your father.”

“I’ve done some very horrible, despicable things, Pietro Semynovich.”

Pietro shrugged. “We’re not discussing that right now. We’re discussing you, as a person.”

“You can’t separate the person from the actions.”

“Maybe when the real person is just holing up inside you can.”

“But the ‘real person’ isn’t inside me, Pietro.” Misha’s eyes went icy. “I’m still the person you know. Your nostalgia won’t change anything.”

Pietro went quiet for a long moment, his eyes meeting the floor. “No, I know it isn’t you.”

“But it is.”

“It can’t be.”

“Some things in life, you have to accept.” Misha replied, pushing the cup aside and getting to his feet. “You have to accept that some people can’t be rescued with a little love and patience. With a little childhood nostalgia and happy memories. Let it go, Pietro. It’s not helping you.”  
Pietro stared, dumbfounded, as Misha climbed back up the stairs, not even giving Pietro the graciousness of a final look back. “You know, Misha, I think--”

Misha stopped, taking a few steps down to meet Pietro’s gaze. He cocked his eyebrow and offered an encouraging look. Pietro grinned, and laughed. “I just think that you’re scared of me.”

“You think _I’m_ scared of _you_?”

Pietro nodded. “There’s nothing a Kosovar fears more than a Serb born in Kosovo. There’s nothing a Transnistrian fears more than a Moldovian born in Tiraspol. There’s nothing Belarusians fear more than Lithuanians born in Minsk. I can go on, Misha.” He got to his feet and put his hands behind his back. “There’s nothing that a Donetskian should fear more than a Ukrainian from Donetsk.”

“You’re living in one amusing delusion,” Misha snarled. “I’ll never be afraid of you. You’re a weak man. A fool living in a fantasy world. You don’t deserve what you’ve been given and you never will.” He stomped up the staircase in a fury. “Go fuck yourself!”

Pietro slunk back to his chair, quiet as he sat alone, thinking.

That’s when Olexey appeared at the threshold.

“What in God’s name have you done?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bark bark woof woof grrr

“What in God’s name have you done?”   
  


Pietro looked up at his visitor, a deer in the headlights of Olexey’s fright. “You, you, you idiot! He’s going to kill all of us! Look what you’ve done.”

“Lyosha…”

“No. No. You don’t  _ get  _ to use a nickname on me now, Pietro Semynovich, this is serious,” he said, holding up a pointed forefinger. “First, first, I have Olya drop this massive bomb on me that you’ve been  _ lying  _ to us this entire time. You’re from Donetsk! Of all the places in this godless country! You’re probably working for the Russians! Probably have been this entire time. I knew you couldn’t have won that election on your own terms.”   
  
Pietro squinted, holding up his hands. “I am loyal to this country as it is. I’ve never been opposed to the idea of it. OIexey Dmitrievich, do you actually believe I’m some Russian infiltrator?”

“I don’t know!” Olexey sputtered, throwing his arms above his head. “All I know is that you’ve been lying through your teeth to everybody. If you’re not here to hurt us then why, in the name of all those dead and all of those displaced and everyone who has looked at our country and turned their nose up in disgust, would you lie about it?”

“For the exact reason you just said. Look at you, you’re already accusing me of things without any reasoning!” Pietro slammed his hands down on the table. “Do you really believe that everyone from Donetsk is immediately an insurgent?”

“No. Of course not  _ everyone _ .”

“Then why are you accusing me of being one?” Pietro demanded, his hands on his hips.

“Because, Pietro, you don’t take sides. You’re like, oh, oh, I’m not picking Nielsen or Hunter, because I want to be neutral. Oh, I’m not going to join a confederacy. I’m not picking sides. Sometimes, sweetie, when it comes to picking sides, you can’t sit back and play referee. It’s not your job to do that. It’s your job to make fucking policy, even if a few people disagree.”

Pietro sat back down, turning his back on Olexey. “Well, I don’t view it that way.”

Olexey slammed his hand into the wall. “Then how the fuck do you view it?”

“I have four years to decide what side I want to take. Perhaps more.”   
  


“Yeah, and those will be over before you know it, and you’ll be rushing to pass legislation when you realize that nobody wants you anymore. You don’t have time to wait.” Olexey’s hands were clenched into tight fists. “Stand up.”   
  
Pietro obeyed, and faced Olexey, towering over him and his expression offering a warning. Olexey’s mouth curled into a sneer and he straightened his posture. “He’s right. You are some weak man. You’re living in a fantasy world where all this presidency is to you is a game.”

“I don’t see it as a game.”

Olexey seethed. “Why aren’t you even trying to defend yourself?”

Pietro shrugged. “I’m tired, Olexey.”   
  


Olexey raised his hand and smacked Pietro across the face, his breathing rapid. “You’re an asshole.” 

Pietro touched the red mark on his face, his cheek stinging with pain. Olexey had not held back, his hands still clenched into fists, trembling as he broke the staring contest. “I’m sorry,” Pietro said, his voice hollow. “I’ll do better.”

“No you won’t,” Olexey muttered, taking a step back. “You people never do.”

“Please don’t hate me.”

Olexey laughed, relaxing his hands and holding them up in surrender, fingers parted. Red marks were visible across his palms. “You better treat Olesya  _ extremely  _ well. Just try and protect what little faith I have left in you.”

“Yes, Olexey,” Pietro said, posed like a scolded schoolboy.

“And good night.”

Olexey pursued Misha up the stairs, shuffling to his own room. His clothes and personal effects were strewn over the floor, his room a mess of his life blended with Pietro’s. Distant, he began to pace across the floorboards, when he heard the echo of gentle footsteps from outside.

Careful not to give away his position, Olexey trailed Misha to Pietro’s study, hiding behind the corner as Misha fiddled with the doorknob and looked around the hall before entering. On the tips of his toes, Olexey strode to the study, stepped inside, and slammed the door behind him. This is when Misha noticed him.

“What are you doing?” Olexey asked. 

“Who are  _ you _ ?” Misha replied, caught red-handed. He shoved his hands behind his back and narrowed his eyes dangerously. 

“Pietro’s brother-in-law,” he said, although it hurt to do so.

“I thought he wasn’t married yet…”

“Soon,” Olexey nodded. “I was invited for the weekend.”

Misha didn’t respond, and kept on searching through Pietro’s stacks of color-coded papers and manila folders. 

“You shouldn’t be touching those.” Olexey fired a warning shot.

“Are you the boss of me?” Misha responded, swiveling to look at Olexey.

“Just a suggestion.”

“I don’t need a suggestion from you. You probably don’t know the first thing about politics.”   
  
Olexey raised a hand and then held it out. “Olexey Dmitrievich Myronenkovo. Energy sector.”

“Myronenkovo—?” Misha stopped in his tracks, hands still on the desk as he studied Olexey up and down through narrowed eyes. “Dmitrievich Myronenkovo… his… son?”

“You’d be correct.”

Misha didn’t move as he started peeking through the files. “I’m certain I don’t need to introduce myself.”

“You sure don’t.”   
  
“And do you really want a handshake?”   
  
Olexey drew his hand back. “Alright, I see. What are you looking for?”   
  


The papers were slammed down on the desk. “Can you leave me alone, Mr. Myronenkovo? I still don’t think you understand the first thing about any of this.”

“Yessir, Mr. General, sir.”

Misha began to huff and puff and Olexey put his hand on the doorknob, pushing his weight forward upon it. The door didn’t budge. Squinting and jiggling the handle once again, the door still refused to move. “ _ Blin _ .”

***

There are three things about Olexey Dmitrievich Myronenkovo.

First -- he cares deeply about a field that most people don’t see as a priority.

Second -- Despite everything, Olexey is a very intelligent and a very loving person. It’s not always easy to see that, because third -- Olexey lets his emotions get the better of him.

His father always described him as an emotional boy. And, as the gods would have it, Dmitriy Myronenkovo was not very happy to have an emotional son. Whenever Olexey would scrape his knee, or get a bad test grade or a mean look from his classmate, he would cry, and Dmitriy’s response would be to scream. He would stick his finger in his son’s face, tell him to deal with the hand that life had given him, and, dear God, to stop crying.

Of course, this would just make Olexey cry harder, which led to a light spanking or going to bed without dinner. His Mama would bring him up a plate of leftovers and kiss his bruise or console her teary-eyed son, but Papa would never provide that same affection. 

It’s easy to see why Papa made such a good politician. And he’d hoped that Olexey would one day follow in his footsteps, making certain that his emotional son kept his grades high and his demeanor withdrawn and competitive. Olexey’s reputation as an overemotional child slipped in favor of a cold and even somewhat mean teenager. He enjoyed the spoils of his parents and was prepared to fill in his father’s shoes, in his suits and minced words and sleazy smiles. 

That’s until Papa fell down the stairs in the government building and broke his neck on the stairs, dead in an instant. “At least he didn’t suffer,” his coworkers would say. “At least Olexey is just about college-aged. He’ll be ready in no time.”

Olexey had really no choice about where he was going to school. His grieving Mama helped arrange a scholarship with the National University, where Olexey was fated to take political science and rot away in the job of an oligarch for the rest of his life. One problem would arise, though, the mere fact that Olexey did not want to be like his Papa at all.

Mama married another man, Stefan Shevchenko, in the summertime. It was warm and his new sister was the one thing going for him. Olesya brightened his days when Mama and his stepfather failed to, and she was the one who encouraged him to turn down the scholarship. Take a gap year. Figure out what you want to do.

“I don’t want to be like my Papa.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have to be,” Olesya said, her hands doused in table flour as she rolled out dough on the countertop. 

“But Mama will be disappointed in me. And Papa’s coworkers. I’ve been groomed for this, I can’t just say no, can I?”

“Miss Rusya would probably prefer you be happy then be stuck in a miserable job you don’t like.”

“It’s not even that.” Olexey sorted through the fridge and held out a pair of eggs for Olesya. 

“Thank you. Then what is it?”

“I like politics. I guess. To a degree. I care more about domestic things and the mechanics of it, if that makes sense? But, but, I can’t imagine hurting people. I’d rather do something that doesn’t harm people. Like, don’t know, charity? Ugh, Olya, I’m going to die here.” He slumped against the fridge in a haze of discouragement.

“I think you should take a gap year. It won’t raise any red flags, and you can change your mind with some research and extra experience under your belt.” Olesya replied, bending over the mixing bowl. “Have you considered working for a ministry? You’re rather good at chemistry! You could work for the Health sector or something? That’s still under the political wing, right?” She held up the spatula in her hand, proud at her deduction. “Please, Lyosha, just ask Miss Rusya if you could take a year off before going to National. She won’t mind. And think of all the places you can go to with all that time off! You have time to figure all of it out.”

He stared at his hands. “I’ll try.”

In the end, he was successful. He got an extra year off, and as soon as he found out, he booked his flights to Brussels and London and Stockholm. It was in Stockholm where he took an Electrical Engineering class, and he learned about circuits and wiring and clean energy and all about the golden veins of light and electricity running through the continent. And it all made  _ sense —  _ the discrepancies of  _ solar  _ and  _ nuclear  _ and Stockholm and Kyiv. 

At home, smokestacks still brewed and pollution had been occurring for decades. When one looks at Ukraine, it’s easy to think of Chernobyl. Nuclear accidents on accidents on accidents. It could be fixed, though with a lot of dedication, and a lot of research and care and time. Olexey took another electricity class, and an engineering class, building up his resume gradually, before returning to the Ukrainian capital in November with a drafted thesis and a plan hidden up his sleeve.

By December, the email was already in his inbox.  _ Welcome to the Energy Ministry!  _

***

Olesya Shevchenka doesn’t smoke. She’s never considered it to be for her. But, when the strange and fascinating and compelling  _ de facto _ president of a Ukrainian sepatarist state offers her a smoke, she takes it. 

  
“Tell me about your revolution,” Olesya asked, trying not to choke on the smoke of the cigar she’s been handed.

“It’s not a revolution if there’s nothing to revolt about anymore,” Alla sputtered. “We talked about this. A revolution out of spite isn’t a revolution.”

“Then why haven’t you given up yet?” she brushed the black hair out of her face and kept her gaze fixed on Alla, her bare face and tied-up blonde hair that frizzes at the edges. 

“Because I’m a  _ very  _ spiteful person, first lady,” Alla replied. “Why are you so bent on redeeming me? Or trying to get me to surrender? Is this for your husband?”   
  
Olesya gaped, her eyebrows furrowing with offense. “No! Not at all. Pietro is a very smart, kind, handsome, intelligent man. He’s a man with a plan. But I know you wouldn’t listen to him if your life depended on it. Your life depends on it, I’m telling you now. And maybe I could change your mind about the position you’re in.”   
  
“If this is for politics I don’t want to participate.”   
  
“It’s-- it isn’t. That’s not what I mean at all.” Olesya coughed. “I just don’t think you should keep a war going if there’s no point in it, besides you being a little mad at my fiance.”

Alla huffed and pulled her hair from its tie, letting the blonde curls fall over her shoulders. “I’m not mad at your husband. I’m mad at the system.” Their eyes met and Alla looked away. “We will see. Okay? We will see.” She extinguished the cigar and whirled around to look at Olesya. “Have you heard of a quid pro quo?”   
  
“Of course,” Olesya folded her hands and nodded, leaning forward in interest. “What is it you’re looking for? What can we give you?”   
  
“What is it  _ I’m  _ looking for? Oh, Olesya, sweetheart, you must have an idea.”   
  
“Well, yes. You’re a militaristic genius. A skilled coordinator and an even better speaker. I’ve read your speeches. I’ve talked about them to my students. I’m convinced you’ve been writing Misha’s, too, by the way. Are you?” Olesya snapped her fingers and tilted her head, waiting for an acknowledgement. Alla nodded, staring at her feet. “Well, it’s not your fault he doesn’t know shit about anything. But I think I know what you want. You’re a woman who has always taken what she wants and has tried to use her power in ways that motivate her interests but keeps her skills sharpened. You’re not naive or foolish, and it makes sense that you won’t give in unless we give you something you want. Do you want power?”   
  
“Who doesn’t want power?” Alla scoffed. “It always feels great to have control. Even the most egalitarian of people can be power-hungry. You can preach equality but still step over people. Just look at the west, dammit. No, Olesya, I don’t want power. I’m sick of having power and doing all these awful little things that make people’s lives worse. It sounds good in practice but in execution it falls flat. It’s not worth it. I don’t feel good about it anymore. I’m only here out of spite.” She crossed her legs, leaning back in the chair with a groan. “I’m sick of being fueled by hatred, I guess. You’re right. Damn, you should become some psychologist. Anyways. I have to think about what I want. Eventually, I’ll figure it out, and then it can all be rainbows and unicorns.”   
  
“It doesn’t have to be  _ all  _ rainbows and unicorns--”   
  
“I know. It would be nice anyways.” Alla smiled. “We don’t have to figure it out right now. But, perhaps, I can significantly distinguish a bit of my presence in the East in a sudden and unexpected show of weakness.”

Olesya shrugged and kicked her legs up on the table. “Sounds great. Fancy a slice of pie?”   
  
“Certainly.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the girls are fighting

“The military genius who doesn’t know how to pick a lock. In all honesty, I’m shocked.” 

Misha was crouched at the doorknob, wobbling the handle with his face an event of red. “Shut your trap! It’s that idiot’s fault that he lives in a five-hundred year old shack with the water pressure of a public bathroom and without functioning fucking doors. Jesus!” As he went in his tirade, he continued to shake the doorknob. It replied by bouncing up and down but still not coming loose and freeing up the room. “Are we just supposed to wait here?!”

“Well, what other option do we have?” Olexey shifted from his position on the desk, pushing aside some papers that appeared to mention Moldova and Romania. “Ah… the window? A two-story fall probably isn’t what you need right now.”

“No.” Misha huffed, straightening as he leaned against the door. “No, I suppose not.”

Olexey put his hands on his hips, speaking with the purpose and direction of a true adult. “Then we will stay. And we will wait.”

“We…” Misha muttered. “Sure,  _ we _ .” He marched past Olexey and took a seat in Pietro’s chair, spinning as he continued his search through the latter’s files and papers. 

“What are you looking for?”

“Something I can use,” he answered, narrowing his eyes as he scanned each and every individual sheet, Ukrainian, English, whatever. He piled them up in random stacks, most likely, Olexey thought, ruining any meticulous organization that Pietro had. “All of this is innocuous.”

“Pietro’s innocuous.”

Misha cackled in disbelief. Olexey turned to face him, throwing his legs over the other side of the desk and leaning forward. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know a thing. Do you?” Olexey asked, exuding venom. The type of venom usually reserved for Pietro. 

Misha blinked, shuffling back a few inches. “You don’t know what  _ you’re _ talking about. What are you onto, Dmitrievich?”

Olexey shuffled through some of the messied papers, plucking out a few he could use, smiling with glee. “Let’s see. Two weeks ago. Pietro writes about a personal experience he had with Ben Hunter in a private liaison, where the two of them had discussed matters of state, leadership, and… a particular incident involving—“

“Give me  _ that _ .” Misha snatched the paper from Olexey’s hand, shoving it his face and discarding it on the tableside with a huff of indignance. “No, this is useless.”

“Patryka Cielenski. Ring any bells?”

“President of Poland. Slaves to the all-dominating Eurostate like the rest of them.” Misha folded his arms, eyeing Olexey with suspicion.

Olexey began skimming the other papers he had in his stands. “Three weeks ago. Cielenski mentioned again. Five weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, eleven weeks. It goes back months.”

“So? So is Oksana Juravschi, and so is Lacramioara Gherardesca. They’re in, like, all of these. What makes Cielenski the special one to you?”

“I mean, if the British Prime Minister brings it up to you then it must be of some particular importance, no?” Olexey tilted his head.

Misha swiveled in the chair, arms folded, signaling Olexey to continue. 

“This pile seems to be particularly devoted to incidents with her as well, seeing as he had everything ordered so nicely. Until somebody ruined it, of course. Oh, the first paper mentioned an incident, did it not? Let’s see if we can find an entry of that incident itself.” Olexey continued, like he was a professor delivering a lecture, a minister leading a sermon, and Misha his faithful student or clergyman. Hopping off of the table and landing on his polka-dotted socks, Olexey continued his search. “Here. See? Not too hard. Everything’s organized, to a degree. Now.” He straightened himself, readying a nonexistent pair of reading glasses. “The following informal liaison, henceforth the Incident, occurred on September 12th, 2035. Three months ago. Ms. Cielenski and Mr. Naumenko were both attending a summit in Zagreb, Croatia, supervised by Ms. Jelka Horvatic and Mr. Ben Hunter. Alright, names. Great.”

“Go  _ on _ ,” Misha demanded, putting his hands on his knees and leaning forward, stealing a glance at the paper. Olexey shifted aside, shielding the paper from view. 

“Other attendants included mister and miz blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. A lot of other people. Anyways, we’re beating around the bush. Let’s find the real juice. Alright, so, at approximately 7’o’clock local time, at the adjourning of a nightly closing meeting, Mr. Arpad Valentine, ah, Hungary, appeared to get agitated with Ms. Cielenski. This was a matter of weeks after they publicly revealed a romantic relationship between them. They were conversing on the side, and Valentine got a little bit bristled and started raising his voice, erm, anyway… this is boring,” Olexey laughed nervously, looking down the rest of the paper until it caught his eye. “Mr. Naumenko would proceed to  _ hit Mr. Valentine in the jaw. _ ” 

“He— he punched him?” 

“He, uh, he punched him,” Olexey repeated, rattled. “Afterward, when everyone was leaving, he came up to Arpad, uh, Arpad started getting more annoyed and shoved him and then Pietro hit him in the face.”

“Hit him in the face…”

“And was then separated from him by Ms. Juravschi and Mr. Ossis. Holy— holy shit. I didn’t hear anything about this. Did you hear anything about this?”

Misha shook his head. “I did not.”

Olexey blinked, setting the paper face down and hopping off the desk. “This, erm, was a mistake. We shouldn’t have looked.” He found himself stunned at the discovery. Pietro, Pietro Semynovich Naumenko, the weak-willed, two-faced comedian who he would normally disregard as unfit, unprepared, unworthy. He punched one of Europe’s most bent dictators in the face, point-blank, for disrespecting Patryka. Now, that got to him, and he pushed the papers aside.

“What’s this  _ we _ ?” Misha shifted and got to his feet. “I take great joy in this. What’re you so afraid of? From what I’ve discerned, you hate the man. You should take as much advantage of this as I am,” he snorted, now ravaging through all of the papers.

“You—! Stop it!” Olexey grabbed Misha’s arm, yanking him off the desk and jabbing a finger in his face. “You foul little man! War criminal fucker. If you lay another finger on his things, I swear, I will—“

“ _ War criminal _ ? You people wish I was a war criminal!” 

“Oh, oh, you little shit. You have killed and displaced thousands. As much as you want to deny it, you’re as complicit in this as anyone else.” Olexey scoffed. “I hope you get brought to The Hague and they let you rot away in prison.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong. They’ll find nothing. I’m innocent.” 

“You are anything  _ but _ ,” Olexey loosened his hold on Misha for a moment, before Misha shoved him backwards.

“Asshole,” Misha snapped. “I wish your father was still alive so he could see that his son is a nobody working for the Energy Minist—“

Olexey didn’t allow Misha time to finish his insult before lunging at him, tackling him to the floor and repeatedly smacking him across the face. “You’re not fucking  _ human _ !”

Misha struggled for a moment, clawing at Olexey’s arms before managing to get the upper hand. Compared to Misha, Olexey was rather frail, and the former had great ease straddling his opponent. Misha pressed his knee into Olexey’s chest, wrestling his arms over his head and keeping him subdued long enough to deliver a start to a half-assed monologue. “Maybe I’m not human, you can certainly think that considering all you know about me. Which, in all honesty, is not a lot. All you think I am is some monstrous war criminal.”

“I’m not far off,” Olexey snapped, struggling beneath Misha’s hold. He’d certainly underestimated his strength before.

“I don’t think you know anything about war, nor do you know anything about politics. You can just live in your bubble and condemn me without knowing the truth. That’s fine, be one of the sheep.” Misha sighed, lowering himself so he was centimeters from Olexey’s face. “When you’re at the slaughterhouse, though, and there’s a bolt gun between your eyes, maybe you’ll think otherwise.”

Olexey didn’t have time to respond before the door creaked with weakness, before lurching open to reveal Pietro, armed with a wooden kitchen spatula. He blinked in shock, ingesting the scene he walked in on before forcing out his words. “Get off of my brother,” he stammered, menacingly holding out the spatula.

“ _ In-law _ ,” Olexey corrected through gasps.

“Or what?” Misha replied, sing-song and mocking.

“I will— I will fucking— I will hit you.”

“With a spatula?”

Pietro nodded, puffing out his cheeks. “Mhm.”

Misha didn’t seem willing to fight anymore. He looked at Olexey again before letting go of his wrists and getting to his feet. “Alright, fine then.” Misha hummed, passing through the doorway. As he left, Pietro whacked him on the back of the head with a spatula. It took a moment for Misha to turn the corner before he said, with little earnestness, “Ow.”

Pietro remained in the doorway, staring slack-jawed at Olexey, whose wrists were now covered in red scratch marks and spots where Misha had gripped too tightly. They remained in silence for a long moment, the only sounds being the house settling and heat crackling in the walls, before Pietro cleared his throat. “Did he hurt you?”

“No,” Olexey replied. “No, he didn’t. I just need an aspirin and a glass of vodka.” Olexey touched his toes, climbing to his feet and heading to the threshold. “You should consider fixing that door,” he said, his voice back to that cold commentary he usually spoke with.

Pietro grabbed Olexey’s arm and filled the doorway. “Please stay for a minute.”

Olexey eyed Pietro’s hand, which was still trembling, then at his face. He looked deathly pale and far too guilty. “I’m sorry,” he offered.

“That means nothing to me,” Olexey replied.

Pietro looked at his feet, nodding. “You don’t like to open up, do you?”

“You don’t need to psychoanalyze me, Petya,” he shot back, disarmed and relaxing against the doorway. His expression went slack and he crossed his arms, eyes shut. Pietro raised his eyebrows, sticking his hands in his pockets and nodding. 

“I don’t. Okay? You’re right. But that doesn’t give you an excuse to try and work that redemption magic on me. I don’t need to be redeemed. I don’t need to like you. You need to accept that. And you just need to…” Olexey trailed off, running a hand through his hair and untangling the mess of curls. “You need to take care of her as best as you can and be the best husband you can possibly be. When my father died, I, uh,” he paused, glancing at the floor before continuing, eyes pricking with tears, “I didn’t  _ feel  _ anything at all. I didn’t cry at my own father’s funeral. What type of person does that, right? Ha. Ah, here come the waterworks, now. Petya, I don’t want you to make her unhappy or make any potential child you have unhappy, I want you to be there and be there as best you can, and that means sitting by and accepting the circumstances, sometimes. Don’t try to hide behind things and change what doesn’t need to be fixed. Just… shit. I don’t know.” Despite the tears rolling down his face and the frog that had formed in his throat, Olexey managed to keep himself calm and steady. Sniffling, he wiped away the tears on his face and turned away from Pietro. “You have my blessing, please take care of her.”

Pietro looked down, and realized that Olexey’s hand was interlocked with his. “Of course. Of course I will.” As he squeezed Olexey’s hand, he pulled him near and held him close. “It’s alright. Thank you for being honest with me. Thank you.” Pietro breathed a sigh of relief as Olexey’s arms linked around his chest. “Thank you.”

***

When Pietro entered the kitchen, he noticed that the porchlight was on. Sitting in one of the old chairs, with an unfamiliar cardigan on, was Olesya. He shut off the kitchen light, leaving just a flickering candle on the counter, and stepped onto the porch.

Olesya turned to look at him, smiling. “Hi, darling.” She pulled the white cardigan around her and leaned forward on the seat. “Miss Pivovarova went on a walk.” 

He nodded, hands in his pockets, before Olesya got to her feet, hands behind her back. She tilted her head and chuckled. “Something wrong?” Underneath the dim porchlight, her brown eyes were illuminated like amber, a chasm of beauty and mystery. Pietro walked over, scooping her up and giving her a kiss on the lips. She threw her arms over him, kissing him back and cupping her hands around his face. 

“I love you,” he murmured, pulling her close and feeling the warmth of her embrace. “I love you more than anything. I’m sorry for everything. For lying, for this, for all of it. You— you don’t need to forgive me, I understand. It takes time and I understand. I just need you to know, Olesya, that I love you, more than I can express, and I’d be the luckiest man alive if I could spend every hour and minute of my life with you.”

Olesya grabbed his hands, pulling him close and resting her head on his chest, silent. She shut her eyes and swayed with him to the sound of the city and the floorboards creaking beneath them. “I love you too. Promise me, promise you’ll be honest, and promise you won’t try and hide things from me. I need your integrity. Please, it’s all I ask. Love, honesty, you.” She squeezed his hands and inhaled the icy winter air. 

“I promise.”

“We’ll make things better.” She led him to the porchside, and looked up at the sky, pitch black and twinkling with stars dimmed from light pollution and the moonlight hidden behind wisps of gray clouds. Olesya interlinked his fingers with hers, closing her eyes and noting how well they fit together, like two pieces in a puzzle. When she leaned her head on his neck, she noticed how it fit comfortably in the space. Olesya closed her eyes, enveloped in the warmth of another body beside her.

***

They met in December on campus.

Snow was built up on all the courtyards and across the benches. The only places that were clean from the mess of white were the irrigation of concrete sidewalks lining the campus. Olesya had been in a hurry that day, wearing a pair of small heels and neglecting to put on tights beneath her skirt, and the cold was getting to her. As she hurried along, neglecting the ice on the sidewalk, she slipped and dropped her bag.  _ Well, there goes my thesis _ , she thought, ignoring the pain shooting up her leg. 

“Oh my god! Miss, miss, are you alright?”

“Huh?” Olesya rubbed her eyes, trying to get to her feet when she felt a warm hand take hers, gently pulling her to her feet and keeping her steady. She felt the pavement underneath her feet and realized one of her heels had skidded all the way across the concrete. “Oh…”

“My goodness!” The man, the one who had helped her, began picking up the spilled papers, now dipped in snowmelt and ice, and piling them back into her bag as best she could. “Oh, your shoe!” He bent at the waist, handing it to her, and Olesya looked up as she went to fix it back on. 

He was tall. Brown eyes, black hair, liquid eyeliner smudged beneath his eyes. “I am, uh, I’m so sorry! Can I bring you to the nurse? You took quite a fall…”

Her head was so scrambled at the time, she couldn’t quite remember anything besides nodding and allowing the beanpole to rush her across campus to the meager nurse’s office. If it hadn’t been for him, the sprain in her ankle probably would have been a lot worse if she put pressure on it while walking in her heels. She remembered asking the nurse, dressed in white and wearing a smattering of political slogan pins on her apron, what the boy’s name was. Olesya was sure she had a class with him her freshman year— Pavel, perhaps? 

“Ah… Pietro Naumenko, if I remember correctly? Lovely kid. Now, if you’re still in pain in two weeks, call me and I’ll see what I can do. Hm? Great! Now, you best get on your way, Ms. Shevchenka!”

Pietro Naumenko, the ‘goth’ kid. Yes, she took a creative writing class with him in her first year. She had been partnered with him once, and felt like a loser when she had to read her bakery romance after his wartime political thriller for their short story project. He told her he loved the prose in her writing, the poetry of all of it. The line about the baker’s personality being reflected in the symphony of the flavors and the cacophony of the ingredients stood out to him in particular. He’d never viewed baking juxtaposed with an orchestra!

Two weeks later, in her sneakers and leggings, she went on her first date with him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *that one pic of barnacle boy with the laser eyes* the alla chapter

Alla Pivovarova plays chess, and she does it very well.

It’s a relatively unknown fact about her. If one stumbled across the Ukrainian Youth Competitive Chess Championship rosters from 2017, they might be a little surprised at how high she placed in the finals. Chess would take her to Serbia, Lithuania, Sweden, Britain, Spain — never overseas — but always back to Ukraine. Maybe not Ukraine, though, _Luhansk_. The Luhansk People’s Republic, a breakaway state established in 2014 following the Orange Revolution. There’s not much weight to the name, at least not in those other countries, where the other children tilt their heads, puzzled at the flag her mother haphazardly stitched on her blazer. Her priestly, pro-European father throws around words such as proto-state, separatist, illegitimate. Her mother always proposes an escapade to Kyiv, or perhaps Odessa, or Lviv, where they can stay in a halfway home or rebuild a new life. Papa is too stubborn to move. Papa says that in a matter of months, the nonsensical fighting will subside, and everyone will forget that DPR and LPR and Crimea ever happened. It’s not a buzzword for Americans and the West to throw around, it’s their home, and it will stay that way for the Pivovarovs until they’re forcibly uprooted from their garden.

Alla’s home is protected from most of the fighting. She lives beside the banks of the narrow Derkul River, among career farmers who sell sunflowers and grain. Their house is overridden with sunflowers, too— they grow up the trellises and underneath the front porch, and they’re inside the porcelain flower pots and bagged as seeds or bottled as oil. Alla’s chess is at least something that will save her from the destiny of her younger brother, her mother, her father. Sunflower merchant. Awful. She’s much more interested in the math she learns at school, the literature written by the greats and the ideas of entropy and determinism that Laplace upheld. Humans are controlled by something external, something that they can never understand, therefore, how can they truly be held accountable for their actions? The thought plagues her mind when she watches the newscasters rattle on about casualties and when she holds her brother’s hand at night after he tells her of the awful nightmare he had. He saw a red sky.

Alla hasn’t seen a red sky, at least not yet. Her riverside refuge is safe from the mass graves and the fear of living in the midst of a warzone, although the warplanes often fly above her head at night and the chess competitions she attends become few and far between. In 2020, she graduates. Her teachers encourage her to pursue her interest in physics or her fascination with mathematics, or to at least continue with the chess venture. Alla wants to, at the very least, but opportunities are few and cash is fewer. She doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life removing sunflower seeds from the center of the flower, her hands raw from the weeding and dirt beneath her nails. So, during the summer, which was uniquely hot for Ukraine’s climate, she completes meager tasks for her neighbors in exchange for rubles and hryvnias. She sows fields and seeds, picks tomatoes and paints walls and builds birdhouses. By the end of the season, she has enough to travel to the capital — Luhansk City.

It’s not _exactly_ what she hoped. The elation of it didn’t come right away. There’s fighting, obviously, though most of it is misdirected from the areas of habitation. She considers her options as a pizza delivery girl inside of a hostel — join the military, go to a school, take a risk and try for a government job. Good things take time, but not for her. She takes an interview at the administrative office. It is interrupted by gunfire twice. She gets a position as a secretary anyways, and makes a few friends. Her nights are filled with writing letters to her sunflower farming brother and hoping he receives them. Her days are identified with sitting in a room with powder yellow walls, soulless and coming loose with age. While she doesn’t get her opportunity to use her math, or discuss matters of quantum physics with other students, she takes what she gets. Occasionally, her boss, a wily man with a movie-like Russian accent, invites her to his office, or out for a meal. He comments on her wit, her intelligence, and she plays along. It works. She climbs the ladder, moving from secretary to manager to bureaucrat. 

Climbing a ladder in a wartime state is not easy, however, and she has her share of near-death experiences. Bullets shattering windows or grazing her ear, sonic booms loud enough to knock her eardrums out during an important meeting with another bureaucrat. It’s preferable to serving pizza or being on that battlefield or picking sunflowers in the humidity, though, so she stays. She stays, and she continues. She continues until there is no one left to overcome, until everyone around her has been eliminated or fled from the scene. At 30, she pushes her ex-boss beneath an oncoming truck, then proceeds to inherit his seat. It’s literally backstabbing — she’s lucky to not have been dead by the time she reaches the height of her power, the Head of State, at 32. Her brother has stopped writing back. She doesn’t have the heart to take the train up north. All her allies in her government seat are close, and her enemies closer, offering shy smiles with knives behind their back. The war continues. Every day is an act of survival.

She waits, patiently, for an escape route. An escape where she can return to playing chess and studying science, understanding the way the world works through experimentation and not violence. She’s not keen on earning any swords through her back, and keeps up the facade of militarism and the menacing intimidation of her enemies while she can. It’s a bandaid on a gaping wound, though, and she doesn’t have much longer. A soft-spoken prodigy with green eyes and a formidable stare has his eyes on her, and she doesn’t want to be around when he draws the knife. Misha can’t support her forever when he’s barely supporting himself, either, and it’s a weak foundation to put faith in. She has no choice but to rely on herself, but what’s left in her dwindling armoire won’t buy her enough time.

Perhaps this is the way out.

Olesya Shevchenka has the most beautiful eyes she’s ever seen. 

***

The shower in Pietro’s house isn’t ideal. It’s rickety, with poor water pressure and inside a bathroom polluted with age and decay. Some spiderwebs are hidden in the far corners and there are still empty body wash bottles on the shower’s shelf. But Alla decides to shower anyway.

It’s been a while since she felt calm showering. The water is ice-cold on her back, but becomes warm with time, enveloping her in a blanket of heat with startling absence everytime she bends to borrow some of the soap or scrub her heels. Steam plasters itself on the frosted glass doors, and Alla draws lines with her hand. When she’s done, she pulls her long, wet hair up into a makeshift bun and observes herself in the unfamiliar bathroom mirror.

Her eyes are a bit bloodshot and she still has makeup smeared underneath her eyelids, although she had hoped she’d gotten most of it off the previous morning. It’s been an entire day at Pietro’s home, and she feels less certain of what she knows then before. All that remains completely is the gnawing sense of egress. She can’t go back. That’s a task she knows she can’t fulfill. Going back after hatching a deal with the state’s major opponent would spell death for her. Even if she did it cleverly, timed and precise, there would be a target on her the moment she crossed that border again. It was imperative the deal be made, and the deal be made _now,_ with or without Misha’s involvement. For Misha, she thought, he can get away with this. But soon enough, he’ll be as desperate for a way out as me. They’ll be after him soon enough if they aren’t already. Alla patted her face and reentered Olesya and Pietro’s bedroom. 

She couldn't help but feel guilty looking through their closet, like a robber in the night. She tossed on what looked to be like an old pair of pajama pants and an oversized sweater, and hoped they’d understand. With the dusty sleeve, she wiped away the last bit of smeared mascara and blue eyeshadow, and started down the staircase. It creaked beneath her steps, but when she made it to the bottom floor, it became solid and supportive just as the earth supports life. She tested the floorboards hidden underneath old carpets with her bare foot. Solid. The smell of coffee on the pot drew her into the kitchen, and, for a fleeting moment, she forgot she’s in the house of Pietro Naumenko and is not going to join her brother at the dinner table. Her heart leaped in her throat but she’s eased by the sight of Olesya, cracking eggs on the stove. Pietro sat at the table, seemingly returning to his normal peppy self. There is a startling lack of Misha and the other one, whose name still escapes her. 

She waits for one of them to instill a word of harsh judgement on her. Olesya just smiled at her and said, “How do you take your eggs?”

“Over easy, please.” Alla’s position goes slack and she takes a seat at the dinner table, and rocked the chair she’s seated in back and forth. It squeaked against the linoleum. Pietro is taking his eggs medium. For once, he flashed what looks to be a smile at her sour expression. She tried her best to smile back without coming off so passive-aggressive, but it comes out a bit condescending. Oh well, can’t all be winners.

“How are you finding Kyiv?” Pietro asks, clearing his throat.   
  
Alla doesn’t realize he’s talking to her until she glances up from her empty plate and realizes he’s looking at her curiously. “It’s… it’s nice,” Alla drummed her fork on the side of the porcelain plate. “I like it. Erm, have you ever been to Luhansk?”   
  
Pietro shook his head. “They won’t let me.” 

“Oh.” Alla nods. “Sorry.”  
  
She’s never talked so civilly with her so-called worst enemy before. “So how about the quid pr-”   
  
He waves a dismissive hand. “Mm. Don’t worry about it. We can get it done. Whatever you want, I can provide it for you.”   
  
“I’m not too sure you know what I want.”   
  
The stove shuts off. Olesya forks eggs onto Alla’s plate. “We’ll work on it. For now, let’s just relax. We have time.”

Alla twirled her fork and poked the eggs. “Thank you.” 

The three sat in silence for a minute, Alla motivating herself to eat despite the pit of hunger in her chest. Finally, clearing her throat and crossing her legs, Alla said, “Where’s Misha?”  
  
Olesya, who had joined Pietro and Alla at the table, exchanged a look with her fiancé. “I believe he’s still upstairs.”   
  
“And the other one?”   
  
“Likewise.”   
  
Alla returned to poking at her eggs. “Alright.”

“Is something wrong?” Pietro asked.

Alla replied by slamming her fork down and pushing her seat in. “3’o’clock, today, we’re discussing the compromise. Take it or leave it.”

“Um, I’ll take it,” Pietro said, scratching his head. 

“Fantastic! I’ll see you two at 3.”

  
  
Just as mysteriously as she arrived, Alla disappeared up the staircase, the unmistakable smell of body wash and musty clothes disappearing with her. 

Pietro’s hand found Olesya’s, as she looked up the stairs with furrowed brows and a bothered gaze. She linked her fingers with his.

  
  
“That was the best interaction I’ve had with her so far,” Pietro commented.

***

Something had drawn Misha to the third floor.

Whether it was just how mysterious and interesting this ancient house was, the smell of a burnt-out lightbulb or simply the way the carved banisters spiraled as they rose to the third story, it was compelling. It almost reminded Misha of the spiral staircase in his childhood home, rickety, with the white paint dirtied by dust and worn down by hundreds of hands, and perhaps that’s what drew him up. 

In his oversized sweatshirt which he’d unashamedly swiped from Pietro’s armoire, he looked like a lost child, wide-eyed and determined for a way back home. He scaled up the circling stairs, keeping one hand on the banister. As he walked, he felt the patterns in the wood link and unlink, and once bent to feel the panelling on the adjacent wall. While he had never been one to moon at art and architecture, the details in the house fascinated him, drawing him further and further up the stairs. 

Though Misha knew he had done nothing wrong, his heart pounded as he stepped onto the floorboards and surveyed the area. What was usually neat and somewhat uninteresting had been populated with cardboard boxes, the door to the attic still slightly ajar above. 

“What are you?” Misha asked nobody in particular.

He looked around the small floor, keeping his hand on his imaginary holster like a true soldier, and knelt to the floor. There was nothing compelling or fascinating about these boxes, despite a few stray knick knacks that seemed to be worth something -- toys, Soviet memorabilia, stripped books and other loose antiques with no purpose. Misha didn’t know what he hoped to find when he switched to a box filled with old blankets, unimpressed with the glorified garbage in the other boxes. He felt like a kid on Christmas morning, hurriedly opening presents beneath the tree.

Misha slipped his hands underneath the blankets, feeling for some loose goods or jewelry at the bottom, when his hands found the canvas covering of a scrapbook. Against his better judgement, he pulled it out. When he held it up against the other boxes, the noticeable lack of dust on the scrapbook drew him in even more.

Sliding onto his stomach and pushing out the book in front of him, Misha opened it and began to look through. When he saw the baby picture at the front and a picture of a three-person family, his heart started to pound again. He would recognize Sveta Naumenkova’s face anywhere, as well as Pietro’s univocal childhood smile. The one where he puffed his cheeks out and parted his lips just enough so you could see that first row of teeth. Of course, now, Pietro grinned properly enough, like a true politician would, but Misha would be damned if he had forgotten that silly little smile.

His fingers were quivering as he flipped to the next yellowing page, either from pure adrenaline or pure fear. The pages were stuffed full with aging photographs from the city’s parks or at Pietro’s school, handwritten recipes and pressed flowers that had rotted and died with age. Misha wasn’t sure if it sickened or infuriated him, as he felt the blood rushing to his face with every page that passed. There was a startling lack of _him_ in these pages, although he remembered taking photos with Pietro, standing beside him in their uniforms or playing games or working together in the kitchen. He knew they existed, he’d seen them for himself. It’s what drew him further and further through Pietro’s early life, through the sudden disappearance of his father in the images and to his entry into high school. It took pages and pages and pages until he found the single image, still hidden in the place it was before, on the page with a torn and browned corner with the stub of a movie ticket nestled in the spine. 

Two smiling adolescent boys, one tall, one short. One with an unmistakable red birthmark, one without. One with a funny, crooked smile, one with a soft, quiet one. Misha exhaled a shaky, relieved breath, drumming his fingers on the plastic covering. 

“Is that it?” he asked, once again, to nobody.

He slammed the scrapbook shut, hands “That’s it?”

Misha began to bristle with rage. He knew those other photographs existed. He knew, he knew, he just knew. Is that all Pietro wanted of him? He saw the light marks in the last remaining photo, too, the pencil lead and ripped edges, slight singing on the folded edges. Looking at it, and feeling the absence of all those other memories he had locked up and thrown away the key to, filled Misha with a rage he had often reserved for special moments. Tucking the scrapbook underneath his arm and storming down the staircase, he reentered the room, where he found a confused Alla.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice a threat, upon seeing the ire on Misha’s face.

“I’m going to k-k-k-kill Pietro,” Misha stammered, searching through the bags and cabinets strewn through the guest bedroom. “I’ll be doing everyone a favor.”

  
“Misha, don’t joke about things like that.”

  
  
He dumped the scrapbook on the bed and struggled to find a lighter in one of the pockets of his bag. 

“Olek Mikhailnovych!”

  
  
Without hesitation, and keeping the lighter alight, he threw open one of the windows, leaning out as far as possible and keeping the tiny flame against the side of the scrapbook. It took only seconds for the canvas binding to ignite, flames licking across the plastic-layered pages and cardstock. Before it could eat away at the contents, though, Alla wrapped her arms underneath Misha’s and tackled him to the floor, wrestling the book from his hands. He was screaming in defiance, hands closing and opening like a spoiled toddler, but Alla dangled it above his head before extinguishing the flames on the carpet. “You. Will. Not,” she hissed , keeping him straddled to the floor while he writhed and scratched at her wrists.   
  
“Let me do it! You don’t understand the first thing about why I _need_ to do this!” 

“For fuck’s sake,” Alla muttered, wrapping her hands around his throat and squeezing. “Shut up and leave it be!”

He whacked her across the face with one of his freed hands, and she released him, hands shaking. “Don’t touch it.”   
  


Misha circled, eyeing the lighter that had been thrown across the floor.

“No,” Alla picked up the scrapbook, hiding it behind her back as Misha approached her. “No,” she repeated firmly. 

“I want him to hurt like I hurt,” Misha said, hands cupped and arms outstretched as if he were a beggar.

  
“You need to learn to forgive people. You must forgive him.”

  
  
“No,” Misha laughed, clapping his hand over his face. “I can’t. I want him to feel pain. Let me just- I need to- I need to burn it. 

“It won’t do you any good and all you’ll do is feel guilty about it later.” Alla opened the scrapbook, the cover now singed and the corners of the pages distorted with black burn marks.

“If I don’t get to look back on my childhood fondly, then neither does he.” Misha held out his arms, pleading with Alla and employing his best expression of sadness. “Please.”

  
She hid it behind her back again, glaring at Misha through narrowed eyes. “It doesn’t work that way.”

  
“I don’t care. I can make it work that way.”

  
Alla scoffed. Misha huffed indignantly and crossed his arms, rocking back and forth on his heels. “You need to talk this out with him,” she stated, picking the lighter off the floor and stuffing it in her pocket. “It’ll make everything better. We’re not leaving. You don’t need to forgive him right away, but you should at least talk.”

  
“I don’t want to talk to him. I tried to talk to him. He thinks I’m someone else.” 

  
“You need to try harder. Did you _really_ try?” 

  
Misha hung his head and knocked his feet together. “I’ll try,” he mumbled. “But only because you want me to. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  
  
Alla handed him the scrapbook. “You have to make yourself want it.” As she stepped backwards, tugging on the sleeve of her ill-fitting sweater. “And I better not smell any burning canvas.”

Misha held the scrapbook in his hands, squeezing it, feeling the textures and breathing in the lingering smell of burnt cardstock. “Alright. Fine. I’ll try.”  
  
She patted him on the head and went for the door, lighter squeezed firmly in her hand. “Good boy.” Misha huffed as the door shut behind her, and hopped onto the mattress. The bedframe whined underneath him, but he rolled onto the covers and held open the scrapbook. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> little BRAT

Olek Mikhailnovych Slobodyan is a menacing politician and a soldier with a kill count. That’s all he wants people to know about him. He wants people to know that he doesn’t treat his perceived enemies lightly and that they should be terrified of him. Terrified of what a pint-sized boy from Donetsk who carries a Swiss army knife and knows how to use a rifle with perfect precision and marksmanship can do. Anyone who stands in the way of his ascent will be dispatched promptly. That’s all there is to know about him. Nothing else. 

When he fought on the battlefield after years and years of training and retrying for recruitment, others would mistake him for a civilian, or even more embarrassingly, a child. But when Misha handled a rifle that was nearly twice his size, his marksmanship was exact. The little boy from the capital was a menace, not one to be taken lightly or to be underestimated. Sure, maybe he wasn’t the most intelligent or observant or the most handsome or fit, but he would like to call himself a  _ killing machine _ , as would his fellow soldiers.

Misha begins to get so trigger-happy his superiors begin to fear just how violent he’s become. His supervisors have deemed him  _ unpredictable _ , fearing that he could switch sides in an instant. It was common that these countryside soldiers were a bit aggressive, but Misha Slobodyan seemed to be a bloodthirsty exception. With a kill count of approximately 90, four years in, and after two years of aggressive training, he is honorably discharged and sent to the capital with a glowing recommendation and a medal. Without his rifle, though, he’s unsure and empty-handed. When Misha arrives at the white house with black shutters and drops his bags at the door, his father is smoking a cigar. 

“Why have you returned?”

Misha is silent.

“ _Why have you_ _returned_?” he repeats, exuding venom.

“They let me go, Papa,” Misha’s voice is steady. “They told me to go home. And they’ll call me if I’m needed on the front again.”

Mikhail Slobodyan exhales smoke and twirls his cigar. “You’ll be saddened to hear Sveta Naumenkova passed away. Cancer,” he talks _ en passe _ , and takes another hit of his cigar. “Have you kept in contact with little Pietro?”   
  
“She… she died?” Misha seethes, but replies with a smile. “No, I haven’t. I haven’t. Why didn’t you call me?”

“You’d find out soon enough, I was sure. Or I suppose I just assumed you were still in contact with her boy.”

“You could have called,” Misha snapped. “I would have preferred it if you called.”   
  
Mikhail shrugged his arms and leaned on the chair where he was sitting. “Look, Sasha, I have received a diagnosis of my own. Leave your loving father be. I raised you for 18 years, and I expect you to find a home and a job of your own now. Go overseas or something, use that military salary of yours. You don’t need to stay in this place any longer.”   
  
“What do you have?”   
  
He laughed and smushed the cigar on the table. “Lung cancer. Are we surprised? No.” As he stretched his arms above his head and rose from the table, Mikhail joined his son’s side and cupped his face. He squeezed Misha’s cheeks and sneered. “I’m surprised you haven’t tried and gotten rid of your mark yet.”   
  
Misha stood like a block of ice, unmoving. “I don’t want to remove it. It’s not worth it.”   
  
“Ah, I see. Have you found yourself a wife yet?”   
  
Misha shook his head. His father exhaled through his nose with slight disappointment. “Oh well. You will soon enough, right? For your Papa? Good boy. Now, Sasha, my dear son. I’m sure you understand my predicament here, don’t you?”   
  
“Not quite…”   
  
“I do not want you here. I’m just saying it. Really, I thought you would be out on the battlefield for a good few years. Why’d they discharge you?”   
  
Misha cleared his throat, swallowing the lump in his throat. “They said I had gotten too unpredictable.”   
  


“Then, then, my dear boy, pick a good predictable job for yourself. A good little office job. And invest in an apartment, or a house, perhaps, as well. You’re no longer wanted here.”

“Why am I no longer wanted?” Misha asked, moving to pry his father’s hand off his face. Mikhail squeezed tighter and his son pulled his hand back again.

“Poor Olek, my little fool. I love you dearly, you know that, but you’ve fulfilled your purpose here. It’s time for you to learn to live without your Papa’s help.”   
  
“I have lived without your help. You’ve done nothing for me, you know that? Nothing.”   
  
Mikhail shrugged. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“You made me like this.”   
  
Again, “Sorry you feel that way. How about we have dinner, you stay the night with me, and you leave in the morning? Sounds like a plan to me.” He yanked his hand backward and Misha relaxed, slouching his shoulders.    
  
“Yes, Papa.”   
  
Mikhail Slobodyan kept a handaxe in the shed outside. The front garden, intertwined with the now vacant home of the Naumenkos, was often overgrown with weeds and bushes. Misha, as a child, would sometimes whack the weeds with the axe, lugging it around like a film slasher and often ending up with quite a few cuts on his hands and legs. 

Misha’s mind raced. He couldn’t sleep. His father was soundly asleep on the couch downstairs, passed out with a small fire still burning in the mantle. With the air warm and sweet with the smells of summer, Misha stepped into the overgrown backyard, his feet taking him to the shed, and finding that axe that was once bigger than he was. It felt heavier in his hands then before, but his hands still fit so properly around the handle. They might have taken his rifle, but they couldn’t take this from him.

Olek Mikhailnovych Slobodyan dispatched his father with six swings of an axe, bloodying the living room and the uniform he so coveted. Add another tally to that unconfirmed kill count, why don’t you? He buried his father in the yard and the weeds would soon overtake that, and the ivy and undergrowth would soon overtake the white house with black shutters. No official death certificate would ever be filed for Mikhail Slobodyan. When Misha sat underneath the showerhead, washing all the blood off of him, he thought about Sveta Naumenkova. He thought about how she would gently help him fix his necktie or brush his hair from his face, with a serene smile and glowing eyes. 

He thought about how when he stared hatefully in the Naumenkos’ bathroom mirror one afternoon, Sveta put her calloused and aged hands on his shoulders and asked, “The birthmark?”   
  
Misha nodded.

“Hm… I think it’s very fitting for you. I wouldn’t have it any other way, Olek, and neither should you. You are a handsome young man.”

Misha looked down at his hands. There was still blood and dirt underneath his nails.

When he sat on his childhood mattress, gazing out at the nighttime cityscape, dressed in some of his father’s ill-fitting clothes, Misha made a promise to himself that he wouldn’t kill again. He had decided he’d had enough of it. He decided his next course of action over a cup of musty coffee. His supervisors had, after all, written him a glittering recommendation. He had also always viewed himself as something of a pragmatist. So, the next day, wearing the smallest clothes he could find and with a new nickname and attitude, he applied for a job in civil service.

Of course he got in. The higher-ups were more than impressed with him and his track record. While he had a simple interior job, doing archival and filing, he became somewhat of a messenger for the cells of the political anatomy. Whispers of a military coup against the sitting government became something of a normalcy, and Misha took it all in stride, passing suitcases and handing files to men whose names he didn’t know.

When the coup occurred, Misha was one step ahead of everyone else. After they disposed of the current head of state, Misha sweet-talked the conspirators into offering him a higher position in the new ministry. And so he was appointed — Head of the Interior. Perfect. Misha was innocuous enough to fly under the radar of his murderous coworkers, and with his promise solid and reputation strong, he waited for all of them to pick each other off. Then, at the perfect moment, he seized his new position — Head of State.

Misha rules with no cabinet and with an iron fist. He refuses to let sycophants get their hands on him or have his position compromised. He hasn’t broken the rule he’s set for himself yet, but was very close to it when Pietro Naumenko was sworn in as President of Ukraine. He never picked up the receiver or even bothered to arrange a meeting. He would keep waging the war that landed him in his position, no matter how much damage came of it. Sure, Misha hadn’t committed a direct murder— he had not wielded his rifle or an axe since that fateful night. But on the border between Donetsk and Ukraine, and in the cities and towns that populated the breakaway country, bodies piled up and blood turned the highways red. So, in fact, maybe he had broken the single rule he had promised to adhere to. 

He waited for the day he would meet Pietro Naumenko again, the lingering knowledge in the back of his mind that he was a liar and a killer, responsible for more individual death than he could count on his fingertips. 

Life’s one certainty hangs over him like a sad shadow.

***

Alla is already downstairs and sitting at the dinner table by the time the clock strikes three. Pietro enters a few minutes later, in the nicest business casual he can sport, Olesya’s hand intertwined with his. 

Alla smiles. “I won’t beat around the bush. You two must have it in your heads I’m seeking something awful. Money, land, a militaristic upper hand.” She paused, leaning back in her chair.

Pietro waited. “Well, are you?”

Alla dropped back down to the floor and slammed her hands on the table. “No I am not. Look, Pietro, this is going to sound bizarre to you, but I’d like to defect.”

“Excuse me?” Pietro asked, taken aback. Olesya’s eyebrows raised as well. “You’re pulling my leg. Never took you for a fellow comedian.”

“No, Semynovich, I’m serious. I would like to defect,” Alla announced, keeping her posture severe and gaze steady. “I am, in the clearest terms, not joking.”

“Are you planning on spying?”

Alla scoffed. “You’d think I’d stoop to that? Pietro Semynovich, you and I both know I’m smarter than that. Look, this isn’t a decision I made on a whim. I’ve been planning defection for a while. I was just waiting for the correct window. This is the window I’ve been waiting for.”

“Alla— why were you in Kyiv with Misha in the first place?” Olesya interjected.

A faint grin touched Alla’s lips. “Well, a bit of it was just to see how far I could get crossing the militarized border in the cargo car of a train with my fellow coworker. Part of it was knowing that I have no true way of getting back across. Once you’re in, you can't get back out.” 

“So you stranded Misha here with you? That’s awfully—“

“Misha can cross freely. He can pull some excuse out of his ass. Military or whatever. Secret operation. Or, perhaps, in all your power, you can provide an extradition back and earn a little clout, Pietro, just an idea. He has no cabinet to explain himself to, no parliament. Maybe some of his military staff will be a bit angry, but that’s about it. For me, it’s different. They’ve been after me for a while now, but if I return having spent the week with our worst rival and his lovely family, I will be dead way before my expiration date. You see my struggle here.”

“Why did Misha come with you?” Olesya asked. 

Alla huffed, running a hand through her hair and letting it fall over her face. “He was adamant once I told him. He’s the only real reason I haven’t already been gutted by my cabinet. Have to hand it to him for that.”

Pietro and Olesya stared at her, dumbfounded. 

“Will— will we be making it public?” Pietro asked.

“Oh, sure, they’ll eat it up. Luhansk’s loyal whore defects to the enemy side. It’ll be a blast. Go ahead. You may want to look out for our next Head of State, though. Nikita Velychko…”

“This isn’t a very detailed plan, is it?” Olesya asked. 

“Well, like I said. Opportunistic thing. I hadn’t originally factored bringing you two into the equation, but I’ll settle,” Alla said, shrugging. “So, what will it be? Can I defect or will you condemn me to my death?”

“What are you looking to receive in return? A government position? What else do you need?” Pietro folded his hands, scooting forward on his chair. “What do I get out of taking you in?”

“For starters, it’s me, alright? Little old me, famed chess master and speech writer, Alla Pivovarova. You’ll want me in your pocket, Naumenko, I know every in and out of the Donbass and what my successors will be keen on taking. That’s what you’re getting. An extra piece to tip the stalemate.” Alla grinned. “I don’t  _ need  _ a government position, either. All I want is a house and a safe degree of autonomy and freedom. Perhaps a new name. I’ll always be here for you, though, because I’ll be so extremely grateful you chose to be the bigger man and let me live here. Hm?” 

“Will you excuse us?” Olesya asked, grabbing Pietro’s arm and dragging him from the dining room without waiting for an answer.

When they faced each other in the dining room, Olesya grabbed Pietro’s hands and squeezed. “You must do it.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m certain. Do it for me, please, and for her. Please.”

Pietro entered the room again, standing opposite Alla with a hand outstretched. “You have a deal.”

Olesya watched from the threshold, smiling as Alla reached her hand out, eyes wide with shock and beginning to well over with tears. Her grip was light, barely touching Pietro’s hand, but with it the deal was sealed. Alla looped around the table, grabbing Pietro’s arm and offering him a kiss on the hand. “Thank you.” Her gaze met Olesya’s, and she made no haste outstretching her arms and enveloping her in a hug. “Thank  _ you _ ,” she repeated, resting her face in Olesya’s shoulder. Straightening and clearing her throat, she leaned back against the wall and gazed up at the ceiling.

“Now, Pietro. I’m going for a smoke. There’s somebody upstairs who wants to talk to you, though, I’m certain.”

Olesya looked at Pietro, grinning and her cheeks turning rosy. “You should. Please. I love you.”

“I love you too.” Pietro stepped up the first stairs, before turning as Olesya made her way to the porch. “Thank you for always leading me in the right way.”

Olesya blew him a kiss and stepped out onto the porch. Alla leaned over the banister, smoking her first cigar as a liberated unaligned citizen, and Olexey was sitting at the table with a newspaper. He pulled it down, surprised at the presence of both of them. “Oh! Hello, President Pivovarova. Afternoon, Olya.”

“It’s Alla,” she said, blowing smoke into the wind. 

***

Pietro knew where to find him.

He knocked on the white door frame, notches lining the side. Misha didn’t look up. Pietro coughed. “Hi,” he stuttered.

Misha sighed, glancing over his shoulder and setting the scrapbook on the mattress. Pietro watched it for a moment, and turned to gaze at Misha. “I see you found it.”

After standing in silence for a minute, Pietro joined Misha on the mattress and bounced. “If you don’t want to talk, that’s fine, but I’ll stay here until you do.”

Silence. “Have it your way,” Pietro said, picking up the scrapbook. For a moment, he scanned it like usual, before flipping it open to discover the blackened and ashy edges. Pietro didn’t speak as he took his time scanning each page, the rotted ends crumbling underneath his fingertips. Nothing was damaged, thought Pietro, thank goodness. He continued to flip through, taking his time before he reached the page. Flowers, movie stub, photograph. “That’s us.”

Misha shifted uncomfortably.

“But you already realized that, I’m guessing. Heh.”

Pietro removed it from the pouch, cupping it in his hands and soaking in the childlike glee of the photograph. Then, he handed it over to Misha, who hesitated before cupping it in his hands. “You can keep it. And you can erase the caption if you want, put  _ Misha  _ and Pietro. I won’t mind. It’s yours now.”

They sat in silence for a bit longer, Pietro swinging his legs and humming. “Did you, uh, burn—” 

“I tried to. Alla stopped me. It’s not too damaged though, is it?”

Pietro smiled and set it on the carpet. “It’s alright.” He turned to meet Misha’s gaze, at last making eye contact with him, inches away from his face and closer than they’d been in decades. Misha’s eyes went heavy and he looked away with a huff.

“What?” Pietro asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“You infuriate me immensely,” Misha replied.

“Yeah, I must be good at that.” 

“You’re the Olympic gold medalist.”

They made eye contact again before Misha turned his eyes towards the bedsheet. 

“I want you to look at me,” Pietro said. “I don’t want you to keep hiding.”

Misha sniffled and wiped his face, looking up at Pietro. “Was it peaceful?”

“What?”

“When… When your Mama died. Was it peaceful? She didn’t go out in pain, right? Were you there?”

Pietro sighed and began to fumble with his hands. “She died in her sleep. I wasn’t there. I was at the funeral. I went to your house, but couldn’t find anyone there.”

“I was at the front. Dad… I don’t know where my dad was. Eh…” Misha rubbed his neck and sighed. “I was blessed to have you and your Mama in my life.”

“I’m— I’m sorry. If I hurt you. I was angry at you. I didn’t know what I was talking about.”

“No, no, I should be sorry. I’m— shit, I’m awful.” Misha pinched his nose and buried his face in his hands. “All I wanted to do was hurt people. You’re right. I still am, and for what? Nothing. This has all been for nothing but a losing battle. A stalemate of a war that nobody’s intervening with. It seems they’ve given up on both of us, Petya.”

Pietro huffed. “I’m not absolving you of everything just because you apologized. You’ve hurt so many people. Your policies have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds. There’s no getting around that. And, and, I hate to say it, I really do. Because I really want to believe that you’re still the boy I know, you’re still my best friend, but when all of this ends, somebody will be dragging you off to The Hague. And you’ll be put away and there’s nothing I can really do about it, because, Misha—” Pietro sucked in a breath, feeling the unfamiliar name on his tongue. “You are responsible for all

this death and all this senseless fighting. I wanted it to stop. I wanted to talk things over with you, I tried, I really did. You never answered my calls, my letters, my proposals. And I wasn’t about to cross an armed border for you and get shot. We had options, you knew what you were doing. You did this consciously. You’re complicit in what you’ve done.”

Misha was quiet, swinging his legs and staring, guilty, at the vibrant socks that weren’t his. 

“I want to believe that you’re still the person I cared about. I want to believe you can be redeemed with enough love and care, I truly, truly do. I want nothing more than that. I wanted a happy ending for both of us. But I can’t envision a future where that happens after all that you’ve done. You’re right about what you said. You can’t separate a person from their actions.” Pietro breathed a sigh, rubbing his neck. “I think it makes sense now.”

They both went quiet, only the sound of heavy breathing and the rustling of the house between them. When Pietro looked up, he realized Misha was weeping. “Oh, Pietro.”

“Hey, hey, hey, Misha. Look. Look at me.”

Misha did, and Pietro tenderly wiped his tears away. In that moment, Pietro’s glowing brown eyes reminded Misha too much of Sveta Naumenkova, and he blinked out more tears, silently weeping as the last figment of the mother he never had wiped away his hot tears with the same gentle touch and calloused hands. 

Pietro’s fingertips were wet with tears that weren’t his. Hands trembling, unsure of what to do next, he wrapped Misha in a hug and held on tight. “I’m— I’m sorry. I’m sorry it has to be this way.”

Misha’s hands were gripped tight around Pietro, like he was holding on for dear life, and Pietro sank to the floor with Misha in his arms, limp and trembling and holding onto Pietro with all the strength he could muster.

Pietro Semynovich Naumenko has never considered himself a crier. He’d call himself an emotional man. He feels his emotions with passion and intensity. He doesn’t bottle them up and he’s clear with them, but also lets them spill over and be frenzied and confusing. Pietro Semynovich Naumenko never feels the  _ need  _ to cry. But on the carpeted floor of an old and rickety house, with his childhood best friend cupped in his arms, wheezing and snivelling and intertwined in Pietro’s grasp, Pietro cries. It’s so unfamiliar to him, that he’s stunned when the tears sting his eyes and roll down his face, salty and bitter and filled with grief. Grief for all the things lost, all the senseless death and violence, all that could have been.

Nothing else is spoken. Nobody comes upstairs. At one point, Pietro lies down on the floor, Misha still wrapped protectively in his arms, and both of them slip into sleep with the room dimming in the twilight.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> IM FREEEE BEST EXPERIENCE OF MY FUCKING LIFE 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

It was Misha who was jolted awake by first light. Pietro was still fast asleep, arms still clasped around Misha. As the latter stirred awake, the sunrise shining in his eyes, he had to pry himself free from Pietro’s grasp. 

“Petya, wake up,” he mumbled, pulling back the curtains and letting the red sunrise pour into the room.

A red sky.

“Mmm?” 

Misha’s hands found the bolts of the window and flung it open, welcoming in a rush of cold air. “Misha, it’s cold, close it,” Pietro murmured, rubbing his eyes and scooting against the bedframe.

He obliged, visibly shivering as he shut the window behind him. As he leaned against the windowsill, the bloodied sky was a red halo around his head and shoulders. Pietro squinted.

“What are we?” Misha asked.

Pietro shrugged. “I don’t think there’s a single word that could encompass all of it.”

“Well, I’d like to hear your definition of us.”

“Alright.” Pietro leaned forward and, with great delay, rose to his feet. He held out his hand, and Misha gingerly took it, hanging his head. “Walk with me for a moment.”

They walked down the stairs, hand in hand. Misha felt the intricate patterns with his free one as they descended. They passed Olesya and Alla, sleeping sound in separate rooms, and Olexey, snoring on the couch with the blue glow of the television still shining on his face. 

“Grab a coat,” Pietro said, grabbing his off the rack. Misha did. “And keep close to me.”’

The sun was cresting the city again, the red sky fading into blood orange. Powdery clouds streaked the sky, and the last of the stars were dimming into the oncoming daylight. Misha held Pietro’s hand, until they reached the obelisk.

It was still early. Nobody was out. The bricklayed streets of Kyiv were souped with black ice as well, the streets thick with runoff and graying snowdrifts. Both of them had to be careful to avoid slipping, silently chuckling when one of them had a little misstep or a sudden ice-skating challenge.

Underneath the fountain, the memorial was still untouched and unlit. Pietro sank to his knees, searching for the lighter in his pocket. He struggled to light the flame with the bitter cold around them, but with enough tries, it sparked to life. Misha stared at it, dark pupils reflecting the single lick of flame. 

“It doesn’t really feel like 20 years... does it?”

Misha was silent, shuffling his feet and replying with a nod.

“Just to think...” 

Pietro clammed up then, bending the lighter to the wicks of the candles despite the sensation of pain on his fingertips. He continued this for three more before the lighter went dead, flickering out and leaving both of them beneath an amber-colored morning sky.

“What _are_ we?” Pietro repeated, incredulous. He rose to his height, muffling a yawn as he gazed out over the Maidan. His hand linked with Misha’s again, and he sighed. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. There must be a word for it out there, I’m sure, to describe us. A line of words one could wield that could put together an accurate picture. I don’t think I can call us friends.”

“Me either,” Misha agreed, his voice brimming with ennui.

“I wish… but there’s no point in saying that, I know. I don’t know, Misha. I keep thinking I could have saved you, I could have pulled you out of this abyss. We could have done it together. Remember when we’d skip rocks over the pond, and when you’d help my Mama bake pastries in the kitchen? The library, and the movies, and the garden. God, the garden. You gave me a dandelion as a flower once, and I kept it, even though it’s supposed to be a weed. But, uh, the sunflowers in your Papa’s backyard were lovely. Ah. It’s useless to live off nostalgia, isn’t it?”

Misha sniffled. Pietro chuckled, and continued his spiel. “Well, I’ve looked at the last photo of us hundreds of times, and if you look really close, you can see those sunflowers in the background. They’re a bit faded now, but... It’s yours to keep.”

“And you won’t have anything to look back on. They’re all gone, aren’t they? What happens when I’m in prison? What good will that photograph be to me then?”

Pietro turned. “Well, if you don’t want it, then you don’t need to keep it,” he said, his voice growing weary. 

Misha took notice and started to fumble with his hands. “They’re all gone. All of them?”

Pietro’s breathing went a bit shallow and he looked out at the city.

“Just say it. Say it so I know.”

“Yes, they’re gone, I destroyed them.”

“Of course you did,” Misha snapped. “Now what. Now what will we do?! Fighting over the last relic of our childhood days like we’re schoolboys again.” His hands dropped to his sides in frustration. “The only difference is that your Mama can’t make us a compromise.”

“Do you have it?”

Misha went quiet and reached in the back pocket of his pants, holding out the crinkled and aged photograph. In red ink: Pietro + Olek, Donetsk City, 2015. Misha held it out and met Pietro’s sullen gaze.

Pietro reached out his hand so that he was facing a little Olek, a little Misha, trapped forever in time. Misha tapped his finger on Pietro’s adolescent face, beaming at the silly childlike grin. They steadied their gazes, gripping onto their respective sides, until Pietro said, “Now.” In one fluid motion, the image gave into the weight of their moving hands, and ripped just about perfectly in two.

A compromise had been made.

“I- I would hope that in some universe, we remained friends. I miss you.“ Pietro said, turning to meet Misha’s gaze. “I miss the person you were but I can’t accept the person you’ve become.”

Birds are calling in the distance, and the ruffle of wings is heard above.

“... I understand. I could have prevented this.” Stealing a look at his shivering hands, Misha saw his father’s blood on them. He then saw the blood of about 90 soldiers he did not know the names of. The blood of thousands and thousands and thousands dripped onto the icy brick. “I could have stopped it.”

They went silent, and Misha buried his hands in his pockets. “I can’t be saved. I don’t deserve it. And I’m not saying that to obtain your pity. I mean it. Petya... I’m ending this. I can’t let this continue.” Pietro remained silent. Misha’s chest flared and he looked away. “If there’s one good thing I do, I want that to be it.”

“You know it’s not that easy.”

“I know. I know. Paperwork and press and the public and the Eurostate and the red tape and the demilitarization and the treaties upon treaties upon treaties. It’s like walking into the light for you, I’m sure, but it’ll be a death march for me.”

Pietro ran a hand through his hair, lost for words. “Don’t say that.”

“As soon as I’m done with it, all the photographs and treaties and the whole making of history, they’ll lock me up and throw away the key.”

“You’ll get a light sentence for having the heart to bring an end to it.”

“But they won’t forget I sat on it for nearly a decade. I did nothing. You know what they say about idle hands,” Misha shot back, fists clenched.

“Okay, okay, whatever. There’s no going around it, you did horrible and despicable things. At least you’re not blaming it on a shitty childhood or a bad hand, at least you’re acknowledging it. At least you can make that choice for yourself. They will see that, Misha.” 

Misha scoffed. “And then what will become of me? People will be screaming for my blood. You don’t know the first thing about justice.”

Pietro straightened and put his hands behind his back. “Well, neither do you.”

Silence, again. Cars began to stream by on the street.

“We best get going,” Pietro said, breaking through the tense silence. He looped his hand with Misha’s again and they started to walk.

Sandwiched in between two apartment blocks on a Kyiv backstreet was a little building, only two stories high and with such a bland exterior the regular passerby wouldn’t believe it to be Pietro Naumenko’s capital residence. 

The President of Ukraine sat on the porch steps and patted the space next to him. Under a lattice overhang, rays of early blue daylight peeking through, they coordinated one Olek Mikhailnovych Slobodyan’s escape back across the border. It would take a day to get from Kyiv to the breakaway capital by train, arranged privately by the President and his staff. Once at the border, Slobodyan would present his passport, one recognized solely by a dissolved Russian government and a rogue Georgian breakaway state. No further questions would be asked, no public or press would suspect a thing, and Misha would be protected beneath the cover of nighttime. No one would know a thing about Olek Mikhailnovych Slobodyan ever crossing the militarized Ukrainian border, despite the reports of Alla Pivovarova’s sudden betrayal to her government, and the gradual slowing and end of the War in the Donbass. 

Once it was over, who knew what would become of Misha? He would probably earn some clout or at least a degree of notice for his inexplicable halting of a 20 year old stalemate, before being properly persecuted and dragged by nameless people to some antique city in Holland. Who’s to say what happens next for a lame duck in the world’s freest shooting range?

When the inexplicable pair finally step back into the modest home, it smells of eggs on the stove and slices of bread in the toaster. 

Olexey Myronenkovo looks up from his newspaper and smiles at Pietro, and glances warily at Misha.

Alla Pivovarova’s hair is loose and wild over her shoulders, face clean and more carefree then it’s been in months. She runs over to Misha and scoops him up in her arms. He squeezes back.

Olesya Shevchenka, soon to be Naumenkova, shuts off the stove and intertwines herself with her soon to be husband, gifting him with a kiss on the lips and asking how he’d like his eggs done this morning. She says, there’s room at the table for everyone, just this morning, just this once. A communal breakfast for a hodgepodge of people.

Misha hangs back, though he keeps close to Alla, hand on her shoulder or arms wrapped around her as she chats with Olesya and Olexey. Who can blame them? It just may be the last time they ever see each other. After breakfast, they snooze on the couch. Olexey helps Pietro bring the cardboard boxes back up into the attic. 

“You know, I’m proud of you,” Olexey said. “I’m proud of what you’ve become. You must think I’m lying, I know, but…”

Pietro sets the box he’s holding down and wraps Olexey in another hug. “Thank you for all of it.”

They descend down the ladder. Pietro says to Olexey, smiling, “You should bring your girlfriend next time.”

When Alla awakes on the couch, Misha still snoring on her lap as a sitcom drones on and on, she follows the smell of borscht on the stove and Olesya’s quiet humming. “Smells great,” she remarks, yawning.

Olesya smirks as she stirs the pot. “I do hope you come visit the Naumenkos in Kyiv more often. Or at my place in Odessa, too. We’d love to have you.” 

“Let’s discuss history more often. And the weather,” Alla drums her fingers on the countertop and grins. “The First Lady.”

Misha doesn’t wake up until 9’o’clock PM. The sky is dark but a lamp flickers in the kitchen. As he stirs awake, he hears Pietro’s voice from the kitchen. 

“I saved some borscht for you.”

When Misha appears in the doorway, Pietro is already crying. He cries silent with a sad smile on his face, holding out a still-warm bowl to Misha.

He doesn’t realize how hungry he is until he’s already demolished the entire plate of soup, wiping away the heaviness of his eyes as Pietro watches. In Pietro’s sad smile, he sees Sveta Naumenkova. When Pietro tells him that he has figured out what they are, Misha nods.

“You’ll always be a brother to me,” he says, and Pietro whimpers, bursting into sad silent tears once again. Misha stumbles over to him and hugs him as best he can. “I’ll remember us, always.”

There is a picture of Pietro in his pocket, a cheeky half-grin and a halo of sunflowers behind his head.

The two spend the rest of the evening on the porch, in silence. Olexey Myronenkovo and Olesya Shevchenka are watching a movie in her room. Alla Pivovarova is going through a scrapbook left waiting on the guest bed. The house settles in the winter breeze.

At approximately 1’o’clock AM, Olek Slobodyan is whisked from Kyiv by a inconspcious vehicle, never to set foot in the house by the Maidan again. Pietro is shivering and his hands are icy, but he doesn’t leave until the car lights disappear around the corner and into the blackness. 

Olesya is waiting for him, dressed in a nightgown and empty-handed besides all the sympathy she can feel for her soon-to-be husband.

Pietro’s tears are frozen to his face. She makes him a cup of tea and rolls him up in a blanket on the couch. “My brave, beautiful fiancé. You are carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, aren’t you? What I would normally tell you is that you cannot save everyone. Even those who we love and who we believe can know better, sometimes they slip through our fingers. Waves on the shore. You knew that, I know you knew that, and you persisted anyhow. Do you know what I see in you?” She cups her husband’s face. “I see someone with the potential to make larger ripples than he knows. Your persistence is what makes you beautiful. Hold onto it.”

She presses her hand on his heart, feeling the rhythm of it. “Safeguard it, above all.”

Pietro senses the warmth of the body beside him and the absence of the cold he was drenched in before. He notices the empty spaces beside him and the ones that are filled with people he loves and people who have changed him. There are startling absences, translucent outlines of what could have been. There are thousands of faces he has never seen but are lifeless and gone underneath the Earth, or perhaps up above. 

The sound of childhood laughter, adolescent pessimism, and adulthood becoming fills the room, a soft whisper and a loud cry, all at once. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wowwoww very happy i wrote this even though it was not finished before school like i had planned and although it is SO inconsistent and not perfect i’m happy i was able to get back into writing with a wild little fic. love these idiots. cant wait to write more for fandom and oc ✨


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